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Ube  mnfversits  of  Cbfcaao 

FOUNDED  BY  JOHN  D.  ROCKEFELLER 


A  CRITICAL  STUDY  OF  CURRENT 

THEORIES  OF  MORAL 

EDUCATION 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED    TO    THE    FACULTY    OF    THE    GRADUATE    SCHOOL    OF    ARTS 

AND    LITERATURE    IN   CANDIDACY    FOR    THE    DEGREE 

OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

(department  of  education) 


BY 


JOSEPH  KINMONT  HART 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 

1910 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

Microsoft  Corporation 


/details/critic; 


ofcOOhartnch 


Xlbe  xantversfts  ot  Gbtcaao 

FOUNDED  BY  JOHN  D.  ROCKEFELLER 


A  CRITICAL  STUDY  OF  CURRENT 

THEORIES  OF  MORAL 

EDUCATION 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED    TO    THE    FACULTY   OF   THE    GRADUATE    SCHOOL    OF    ARTS 

AND    LITERATURE    IN   CANDIDACY    FOR    THE    DEGREE 

OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

(department  of  education) 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSIT 

OF 


BY 

JOSEPH  KINMONT  HART 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 

1910 


LCzte 
Hz 


Copyright  1910  By 
Thb  University  of  Chicago 


Published  April  1910 


Composed  and  Printed  By 

The  University  of  Chicago  Press 

Chicago,  Illinois,  U.S. A 


/ 


PREFACE 

This  study  was  evolved  in  connection  with  the  writer's  work  in  the 
departments  of  philosophy,  psychology,  and  sociology.  It  is  not  a  report 
of  work  done  in  a  laboratory,  though  laboratories  are  not  unknown  to  the 
writer.  It  is  herein  implied,  if  not  explicitly  stated,  that  the  greatest 
problem  in  the  educational  situation,  today,  is  one  which  cannot  adequately 
be  handled  in  the  mere  laboratory.  In  fact,  it  cannot  be  found  inside  a 
laboratory.  It  is  the  larger  problem  of  the  intimate  logic  of  experience, 
in  which  concrete  educational  values  are  created  and  assimilated,  and  the 
wider  problem  of  the  uncertain  play  of  those  social  forces  which  alone  can 
give  adequate  stimulation  to  the  individual's  educational  activities.  Out 
of  these  vital  situations  there  may  arise,  here  and  there,  important  prob- 
lems of  detail  which  can  be  handled  successfully  only  in  a  laboratory. 
But  laboratory  and  "life"  must  alike  contribute  to  the  development  of  a 
convincing  "logic  of  experience"  which  will  serve  as  a  more  adequate 
guide  in  pedagogical  practice. 

The  following  writings  and  materials  have  helped  to  mold  the  point 
of  view  underlying  this  study:  in  psychology,  Angell's  Psychology;  articles 
by  Dewey,  especially  on  "The  Reflex  Arc  Concept,"  and  "The  Theory 
of  Emotions";  Cooley's  Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order;  and  par- 
ticularly some  unpublished  lectures  by  Professor  G.  H.  Mead,  on  "Social 
Psychology,"  and  "The  Logic  of  the  Social  Sciences";  in  logic,  Dewey's 
Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  supplemented  by  studies  in  the  development  of 
logical  theory,  with  Professor  A.  W.  Moore;  Ethics  by  Dewey  and  Tufts, 
with  work  in  the  historical  evolution  of  morality  and  ethics  with  Professor 
Tufts,  gives  the  fundamental  point  of  view;  and  the  general  educational 
standpoint  is  found  in  unpublished  lectures  by  Professors  Dewey,  Mead, 
Angell,  Tufts,  and  Henderson. 


2944G4 


I.    INTRODUCTION 

Present-day  awareness  of  the  insufficiency  of  our  educational  results, 
and  present-day  protests  against  traditional  educational  theory  and  prac- 
tice have  become  very  specific  in  form,  and  are  becoming  very  general  in 
extent. 

We  are  being  told  by  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale  that  our  public-school  system 
almost  fails  in  instilling  morality,  by  President  Eliot  that  the  intelligence  pro- 
duced is  ineffective  and  not  worth  the  money  spent,  by  Admiral  Evans  that  its 
product  is  contemptible,  by  Fiske  that  it  is  useless  in  business,  by  Edison  that  it 
has  no  profitable  relation  to  applied  science,  by  A.  C.  Benson  and  Sir  Frederic 
Harrison  that  it  is  eminently  successful  in  turning  out  uniformly  stupid  types,  void 
of  originality,  by  Rabbi  Hirsch  that  it  is  the  biggest  failure  of  modern  times.1 

It  is  true  that  much  of  this  sort  of  criticism  is  largely  rhetorical;  but 
the  mass  of  it,  which  fills  unnumbered  pages  of  periodical  literature,  and 
books  without  end,  is  not  only  true  as  applied  to  the  public-school  system, 
but,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree,  of  all  forms  of  educational  activity.  The 
critical  and  reconstructive  forces  of  the  modern  world,  which  have  been 
producing  such  profound  and  beneficent  changes  in  many  phases  of  our 
world-experience,  are  but  slowly  penetrating  into  the  region  of  educational 
theory  and  practice.  This  is,  of  course,  quite  in  keeping  with  the  general 
logic  of  experience:  that  which  is  most  intimate  in  experience  yields  itself 
last  of  all  and  most  unwillingly  to  the  criticisms  and  reconstructions  which 
the  changing  order  brings. 

In  spite  of  this  fact,  much  has  already  been  accomplished  in  the  direc- 
tion of  educational  reconstruction.  Society  as  a  whole,  however,  lacks 
the  reconstructive  purpose.  Reconstruction,  too  often,  connotes  mere 
iconoclastic  innovation,  lacking  seriousness  of  programme.  There  is  popu- 
lar distrust  of  the  efficacy  of  present  reconstructive  methods.  There  is  a 
decided  unwillingness  to  permit  educational  institutions  and  activities 
to  be  thrown  into  the  general  current  of  scientific  experimentation.  Even 
educational  theory  maintains  a  certain  sacredness  of  character.  All  this 
is  due,  partly  to  the  sacred  regard  in  which  " education"  is  held,  especially 
by  the  American  mind;  partly  to  the  naive  distrust  of  experimental  methods. 
But  the  values  of  these  new  ideals  can  be  determined  only  by  passing 

1  Johnston,  "Social  Significance  of  Various  Movements  for  Industrial  Education," 
Educational  Review,  Vol.  XXXVII,  pp.  160-80. 


2  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

them  through  the  fierce  heats  of  battles  with  old  ideals  in  a  very  real 
"struggle  for  existence."  In  this  way,  the  "new  education"  is  slowly 
working  its  way  into  social  consciousness,  and  becoming  a  part  of  social 
method.  And  as  society  becomes  more  and  more  self-directive,  self-con- 
trolled, and  self-conscious,  the  spirit  of  reconstruction  will  find  itself  more 
and  more  at  home  in  the  region  of  pedagogical  activity,  and  more  pro- 
found and  far-reaching  results  will  follow,  both  for  the  child  and  for  the 
social  whole.  For,  in  this  way  of  education,  alone,  will  come  that  more 
intelligent  control  of  the  whole  process  of  social  growth  and  reproduction 
which  is,  at  present,  the  hope  of  social  theorists.1 

If  we  should  attempt  to  sum  up  all  the  criticisms  of  present-day  results 
in  education,  one  word  would*  perhaps,  suffice  to  cover  all  points  of  attack. 
Almost  all  criticisms  agree  that  our  actual  educational  results  are,  in  vary- 
ing degrees,  irrelevant  to  the  actual  life-conditions  of  the  modern  world.  They 
do  not  effectually  function  in  relating  the  growing  individual  to  the  actual 
world  in  which  he  is  to  live.  Accordingly,  all  efforts  under  the  direction 
of  the  "new  education"  are  employed  in  the  task  of  securing  results  that 
will  be  relevant  to  the  world  in  which  the  developing  individual  is  to  live. 
Some  of  these  efforts  are,  in  themselves,  more  or  less  irrelevant  to  the 
situation,  because  they  are  mechanical  and  arbitrary  in  every  way,  while 
the  present  trend  of  affairs  is  in  the  direction  of  a  more  vital  emphasis 
upon  personality;  some  of  them  but  repeat,  under  other  forms,  traditional 
errors;  but  the  most  vital  and  promising  of  these  efforts  have  set  themselves 
some  more  or  less  complete  phase  of  the  definite  task  of  scientifically  con- 
sidering the  whole  field  of  education  in  its  relation  to  the  whole  of  life, 
with  the  hope  of  working  out  some  more  completely  organic  conception  of 
the  process.  We  shall  note  some  of  these  attempts  later;  here  it  is  neces- 
sary to  make  clear  the  central  problem  of  the  educational  situation  of  today. 

There  is  a  "new"  biology  which  attempts  to  state  the  appearance  of 
specific  forms  of  organisms  in  terms  of  the  life-conditions  which  obtain 
in  the  production  of  those  forms.  This  procedure  is  becoming  the  general- 
ized method  of  wide  ranges  of  scientific  inquiry.  Thus,  psychology  is 
attempting  to  describe  the  conditions  under  which  the  phenomena  of 
mental  life  appear;  logic  is  interested  in  the  conditions  under  which  we 
realize  our  worlds  of  physical  and  social  relationships;  and  ethics  is  giving 
us  the  historical  and  psychological  conditions  under  which  the  progressive 
realization  of  our  moral  values  goes  on  in  concrete  experience.  Now, 
in  so  far  as  education  is  anything  more  than  the  mere  absorption  of  concrete 
social  habits,  or  the  mere  impartation  of  concrete  information,  such  sciences 

1  Sumner,  Folkways,  p.  118. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

as  psychology,  logic,  and  ethics  have  been  peculiarly  efficient  in  rescuing 
it  from  its  primitive  naivete.  But  the  persistent  problem  in  educational 
theory,  today,  is  this :  Can  education  be  reconstructed  on  the  basis  of  the 
functional  aspects  of  these  foundation  sciences  ?  Can  the  creative  aspect 
of  experience,  as  contrasted  with  the  merely  cumulative  aspect,  be  made  the 
central  factor  in  the  organization  of  educational  activities  ?  Can  the  pro- 
cess of  mental  development  be  substituted  for  the  traditional  method 
of  mere  impartation  of  ideas? 

There  is  still  a  profound  difference  of  opinion  at  this  point.  Over 
against  any  suggestion  of  change  in  the  fundamentals  of  educational  prac- 
tice, the  old  tradition  rises  in  protest.  It  is  a  theoretically  impregnable 
position  that  (to  quote  a  modern  German  writer),  "Weltanschauung  und 
Unterricht  miissen  miteinander  harmonieren " ;  but  in  practice  there 
seems  to  be  a  fundamental  conflict  between  the  very  concept  of  "  Unter- 
richt," and  the  modern  " Weltanschauung."  The  same  writer  declares, 
further:  "Wir  durfen  auch  die  alten  Bausteine  nicht  mehr  benutzen,  wenn 
wir  sehen  sie  morsch  geworden  sind."  But  conservative  educational  prac- 
tice replies:  "Is  it  certain  that  the  old  foundations  are  rotten?  And,  if 
they  are,  can  these  modern  'structureless'  sciences  give  us  actual  and 
substantial  foundations  in  their  stead?  Do  they  not,  rather,  destroy  all 
possibility  of  secure  foundation?"  -^^^ 

However,  since  education  is  a  vital  phase  of  the  whole  of  the  social 
process,  and  not  a  mere  addendum  to  it,  any  change  in  the  general  social 
point  of  view  must  be  reflected,  in  some  measure,  in  educational  theory 
and  practice;  and  if  that  changed  social  point  of  view  should  profoundly 
affect  the  very  heart  of  the  social  process  and  the  conception  of  social 
method,  educational  activities  must  be  profoundly  affected,  likewise:  the 
present  unrest  is  witness  of  this  principle.  Compayre  has  pointed  out 
that  "to  the  changing  conceptions  in  psychology  changing  conceptions  in 
pedagogy  constantly  correspond,"  and  that  "every  ethical  system  contains 
within  itself  the  germs  of  an  original  and  appropriate  system  of  pedagogy."1 
In  another  place  he  speaks  of  the  effects  upon  pedagogical  practice  of, 
changing  points  of  view  in  logical  theory. 

The  issue  is,  thus,  fairly  joined  between  these  foundation  sciences 
of  psychology,  logic,  and  ethics,  and  that  superstructure  of  educational 
theory  and  practice  which  is  built  upon  them.  These  sciences  have  been 
profoundly  changed  in  recent  years,  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  the  older 
conceptions  are  no  longer  dynamically  present  in  our  constructive  thinking 
or  in  our  thoughtful  activities:  how,  then,  shall  education,  which  rests 
1  Compayre,  Histoire  de  la  pedagogie,  p.  xi. 


4  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

upon  them,  escape  the  profound  reconstruction  which  is  implicit  in  this 
changed  foundation  ? 

But  the  issue  is  deeper  than  a  mere  struggle  between  points  of  view 
in  contemporary  scientific  doctrine.  The  changed  points  of  view  in  psychol- 
ogy, logic,  and  ethics  do  not  make  manifest  in  scientific  forms  the  changed 
points  of  view  in  concrete  social  processes.  It  is  a  social  change  of  method; 
it  has  gone  far  on  its  theoretical  side :  the  present  and  the  immediate  future 
are  waiting  to  see  whether  society  will  be  able  to  carry  out  in  any  complete 
and  practical  way  the  educational  reconstructions  which  are  demanded 
by  these  theoretical  considerations,  and  which  are  most  urgently  rooted 
in  the  very  logic  of  present-day  social  conditions. 

This  study  will  be  devoted  to  a  consideration  of  certain  phases  of  this 
reconstructive  task.  The  thesis  here  set  forth  is  this:  What  is  demanded 
by  the  most  urgent  considerations  of  social  unrest,  today,  and  what  is 
implied  in  the  reconstructions  of  educational  foundations,  must  be  carried 
through  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  traditional  institutions. 


II.  THE  NATURE  OF  THE  CONCRETE  EDUCATIONAL 

PROBLEM 

In  the  primitive  group-life,  consciousness  and  responsibility  were  limited 
to  the  concreteness  of  the  world  of  active  relationships.  Education  was, 
therefore,  completely  social  in  character  and  results,  because  the  whole 
of  society  was  found  in  the  concrete  world  of  the  developing  individual. 
There  were  no  social  situations  which  lay  beyond  the  possible  experience 
of  the  individual,  no  scientific  differentiations  of  experience  remote  from 
the  practice  of  life.  The  educational  processes  were  implicit  in  the  com- 
munity life-processes.  The  content  of  knowledge  was  in  the  social  habits 
and  activities,  the  results  were  such  as  had  immediate  application  in  prac- 
tice, which  were  called  for  in  the  concrete  social  situations,  and  which  were 
subject  only  to  the  general  law  of  the  elimination  of  the  unfit.  Throughout 
the  period  of  plasticity  and  development  the  youth  felt  himself  surrounded 
by  the  upholding,  compelling,  criticizing,  and  constructive  forces  of  the 
social  life.  The  educative  processes  were  a  part  of  the  whole  struggle 
for  existence  which  the  whole  group  was  constantly  facing,  and  they, 
therefore,  carried  with  them  the  vital  sanctions  of  life  itself. 

The  results  of  such  immediate  processes  of  education  could  be  stated, 
of  course,  in  terms  of  complete  social  adaptation:  the  life  of  the  group 
became  the  content  of  the  life  of  the  growing  youth,  and  at  his  initiation 
into  manhood  he  took  upon  himself,  emotionally,  all  the  content  of  the 
social  purpose.  In  so  far,  then,  as  the  social  and  the  moral  are  identical, 
such  education  was  completely  moral;  i.  e.,  it  organically  included  all  the 
elements  of  consciousness  and  responsibility  that  the  adult  life  afforded. 
Its  lack  must  be  stated  in  terms  of  the  limited  content  of  the  life  of  the  lim- 
ited group — a  lack  that  could  be  met  only  by  means  of  social  reconstructions 
that  should  be  based  on  the  inclusion  of  wider  ranges  of  interest  and  activity 
within  the  group,  the  "  cross-fertilizations  of  cultures,"  the  development  of 
a  wider  basis  for  a  more  complete  consciousness  and  a  richer  personality. 
In  the  primitive  world — a  world  whose  control  was  largely  extrinsic — 
this  development  could  come  only  by  means  of  the  social  shock  of  group 
conflict,  conquest,  and  assimilation.  In  this  way,  alone,  could  group 
habit  be  broken  and  the  possibility  of  larger  and  richer  phases  of  conscious- 
ness be  assured.  Habit  and  the  absorption  of  habit  were  fully  provided 
for:   the  educational  lack  lay  in  the  direction  of  that  outlook  which  comes 

5 


6  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

only  in  the  reconstructive  attitude,  which  is  productive  of  the  more  inclusive 
social  self-consciousness  and  which  is  deposited  in  the  social  inheritance 
in  terms  of  theory. 

But  modern  educational  practices  must  function  in  a  very  different 
sort  of  world,  and  the  changed  world  has  come  to  realize  that  educational 
practices  have  not  kept  up  their  primitive  organic  and  vital  relatedness 
to  the  life-processes  and  social  situations.  The  social  and  scientific  phases 
of  experience  have  grown  very  complex  and  become  differentiated  into 
the  worlds  of  social  and  scientific  theories  under  the  forms  of  " sciences" 
which  are  more  or  less  divorced  from  the  immediacy  of  practice,  and  which 
lie,  for  the  most  part,  beyond  the  experience  of  all  save  experts  in  each  par- 
ticular science.  To  be  sure,  there  is  a  large  body  of  common  social  habit, 
knowledge,  tradition,  popularized  science,  etc.,  which  becomes,  in  some 
degree,  the  common  possession  of  all  members  of  a  common  society,  and 
which  corresponds  to  the  practices  of  the  primitive  group,  being  perpetuated 
and  propagated  by  the  same  sorts  of  primitive  educational  agencies.  But 
/*"lf  is  within  the  limits  of  this  popular  knowledge  that  quackery  and  hum- 
bugs have  their  most  persistent  operations;  it  is  the  seed-bed  of  social 
prejudices  and  ignorance.  Its  traditions  keep  it  from  accepting  progress; 
and  save  as  its  superstitions,  mere  opinions,  and  attenuated  facts  are  broken 
through  by  some  sort  of  process  which  sets  the  problem  of  reconstruction 
and  conscious  enlargement,  there  is  no  opportunity  for  either  individual 
moral  character,  large  reverence  for  truth,  or  the  taste  for  the  finer  forms 
of  beauty  to  thrive. 

It  is  in  the  relation  of  individual  and  social  activities  to  the  more  critical 
and  constructive  arts  and  sciences,  which  rise  like  mountain  peaks  beyond 
the  borders  of  this  common  ground,  that  the  educational,  i.  e.,  the  moral 
and  social,  values  are  to  be  achieved  today.  Each  of  these  sciences  has 
its  definite  and  vital  relationship  to  the  social  life  and  possibilities  of  our 
times:  each  offers  opportunity  for  the  development  of  individual  powers 
of  appreciation  and  living;  each  offers  possibilities  of  enlarging  the  sum  of 
human  controls  of  the  resources  of  the  world.  Whether  on  the  side  of  the 
physical  or  the  social  sciences,  the  opportunity  is  the  same.  Indeed,  it 
may  well  be  pointed  out  that  the  development  of  the  physical  world  and 
its  sciences  has  been  a  means  to  social  differentiation  and  attainment, 
and  that  the  enlargement  of  the  social  world  has  been  made  possible  only  in 
terms  of  the  extension  of  man's  control  over,  and  reconstruction  of,  the 
world  of  physical  means.  For  example,  the  only  way  the  Roman  could 
concretely  think  the  Roman  Empire  was  by  means  of  the  connecting  Roman 
roads  that  ran  to  every  corner  of  it;   and  conversely,  the  only  excuse  for 


NATURE  OF  THE  CONCRETE  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEM  7 

building  those  roads  lay  in  the  extension  of  the  social  consciousness  which 
demanded  a  concrete  and  continuous  means  of  expressing  itself. 

But,  today,  theory  has  far  outrun  the  possibility  of  concrete  presentation 
to  the  common  man:  there  are  no  " Roman  roads"  through  the  world- 
empires  of  most  of  the  sciences  by  means  of  which  they  can  be  made  con- 
crete to  the  ordinary  citizen.  To  be  sure,  the  tremendous  offerings  of 
knowledge  give  endless  opportunities  for  the  satisfaction  of  all  sorts  of 
interests  or  curiosities,  for  the  enlargement  of  funds  of  information,  or 
for  the  enrichment  of  personality.  And  one  can  imagine  a  world  of  serious 
personalities,  each  with  its  own  practical  foundation  in  concrete  interest, 
finding  in  the  wealth  of  the  world's  intelligence  opportunity  to  develop 
endlessly  in  chosen  directions;  using  theory  to  make  practice  efficient  and 
intelligent,  and  giving  concreteness  to  the  theoretical  by  putting  it  at  work 
in  the  world  of  activities. 

But,  today,  practice  and  theory  seem,  most  frequently,  to  miss  each 
other.  Practice  is  impatient  of  theory  and  goes  on  its  own  way  despising 
the  "  impractical,"  and  ends,  usually,  in  a  blind  alley  of  habit  from  which 
it  has  no  power  to  escape.  Or,  theory  feels  itself  independent  of  practice, 
is  sure  that  if  it  " knows"  it  can  readily  "do"  and  goes  on  its  own  way. 
But  in  attempting  to  climb  the  mountains  of  pure  theory,  it  too  often 
misses  altogether  the  meanings  and  relations  science  really  bears  to  social 
living,  and  it  becomes  lost  on  the  cold  heights  of  mere  theoretical  consider- 
ation. Thus,  the  student  of  political  science  may  forget,  or  despise,  to 
vote;  and  the  student  of  theology  may  miss  or  come  to  despise  the  love 
which  "suffereth  long  and  is  kind." 

Concretely,  this  sets  the  educational  problem  of  the  present.  Tradition- 
ally, practice  was  secured  in  the  social  life  and  practical  activities  of  the 
home,  the  farm,  and  the  more  simple  social  situation  of  the  past;  while  the 
school  came  in  to  offer  a  complement  in  the  way  of  theory.  This  theory 
was  usually  very  remote  from  the  actual  life  of  the  child;  but  so  long  as 
there  was  real  practice  in  the  mastery  of  life,  the  irrelevancy  of  the  theoretical 
learning  of  the  schools  was  not  so  noticeable.  But  when  the  city  street 
took  the  place  of  the  farm  or  the  shop ;  when  the  flat  took  the  place  of  the 
home  with  its  round  of  social  activities  and  interests,  and  when  the  isolation 
of  the  city's  family-life  took  the  place  of  the  old  neighborhood,  with  its 
oversight  over  growing  youth,  the  old  forms  of  practice  almost  completely 
disappeared;  the  school  did  not  rise  to  this  changed  situation:  the  child 
was  left,  largely,  to  casual  and  meretricious  influences  at  home  and  on  the 
street,  and  to  obviously  irrelevant  studies  in  the  school.  So  the  great 
educational  problem  becomes:  How  shall  the  educational  forces  that  con- 


8  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

dition  the  development  of  the  child  be  organized  and  controlled  so  as  to 
assure  the  right  amount  of  constructive  practice  for  giving  reality  to  the 
world  and  to  experience,  and  the  right  amount  of  theory  for  giving  ever- 
enlarging  impetus  to  experience  and  intelligence  in  the  control  of  the  world, 
and  the  development  of  a  constructive  and  responsibility-assuming  attitude 
toward  society  ? 

Educational  activity  seems  to  be  uncertain  as  to  its  proper  direction 
in  this  emergency.  Shall  more  practice  be  emphasized?  The  cry  is 
immediately  raised  that  such  education  tends  to  forget  the  old  ideals  of 
liberal  culture,  and  to  become  merely  utilitarian.  Shall  practice  be  ignored 
in  the  interests  of  the  higher  culture  ?  The  answer  is  pointed  out  in  the 
overcrowded  professions,  and  the  shallowness  of  our  ideals  of  culture,  etc. 
One  inevitable  result  of  the  present  situation  is  to  be  seen  in  the  bewilder- 
ing number  of  different  kinds  of  schools  and  " educations"  which  are 
demanding  public  attention  and  support.  Many  of  these  seize  upon,  and 
emphasize,  some  obvious  aspect  of  the  general  situation,  with  impudent 
disregard  of  other  aspects  of  the  problem,  or  of  the  situation  as  a  whole. 
Thus,  we  have  schools  of  industry,  trades,  and  commerce,  covering  every 
phase  of  the  complex  division  of  labor,  and  appealing  to  all  who  feel  that 
the  salvation  of  the  world,  at  present,  lies  in  the  extension  of  practice,  with 
but  incidental  regard  for  the  elements  of  theory.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  are  the  innumerable  schools  for  professional,  cultural,  disciplinary, 
ethical,  religious,  and  research  interests,  which  largely  ignore,  and  fre- 
quently despise,  the  practical  phases  of  life.1 

If,  now,  we  ask  what  course,  or  courses,  are  open  to  present  educational 
activity,  and  what  prospects  the  immediate  future  offers  of  solution  of  these 
conditions,  the  reply  seems  to  be  indicated  somewhat  as  follows:  There 
are  some  who  have  especially  strong  intellectual  tastes,  who  can  "take  on" 
ideas  easily;  these  will  want  to  fit  themselves  for  the  professions,  the  cultural 
arts,  and  the  managing  occupations;  they  are,  therefore,  to  be  educated 
along  prevailingly  intellectual  and  theoretical  lines,  with  no  special  reference 
to  practice  during  the  period  of  educational  preparation.  There  are  a 
great  many  more  who  can  hope  to  be  nothing  more  than  industrials  all 
their  days,  who  have  little  aptitude  for  ideas,  and  little  interest  in  theory, 
and  these  must  be  content  with  a  practice  education  for  some  industrial 
situation,  with  little  reference  to  the  higher  intellectual  or  theoretical 
demands  of  the  situation,  or  its  implications  for  social  life.  While  for 
both  these  classes  these  obviously  imperfect  forms  of  education  are  to 
be  completed  by  means  of  some  specifically  " moral  education"  which 

1  Johnston,  Educational  Review,  Vol.  XXXVII,  pp.  160  f. 


NATURE  OF  THE  CONCRETE  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEM  9 

shall  relate  the  individuals  and  their  classes,  in  some  way,  to  a  more  unified 
and  human  world.  This  study  will  be  specifically  devoted  to  the  consider- 
ation of  those  forms  of  "moral  education"  which  are  related  to  this  theory, 
but  it  will  be  necessary  to  keep  in  mind,  all  the  way,  the  organic  relation- 
ships of  the  whole  problem. 

We  must  not,  however,  lose  sight  of  a  very  important  fact:  the  most 
intelligent  and  constructive  thought  in  education,  today,  is  demanding  that 
we  shall  stop  talking  about  "professions"  and  "trades,"  with  their  conno- 
tations of  class  distinctions  inimical  to  democracy;  that  we  shall  speak 
only  of  "vocations"  for  all;  that,  therefore,  this  overemphasis  upon  intel- 
lectualistic  education  for  some,  upon  mere  trade  instruction  for  the  many, 
and  upon  an  exotic  "moral  education"  for  all,  to  serve  as  a  humanizing 
of 'the  mechanical,  shall  also  come  to  an  end;  that  in  their  place  there  shall 
be  set  up  a  more  organic  ideal  of  a  properly  liberal  vocational  education 
for  all  the  differentiating  aspects  of  life — an  education  in  the  very  midst 
of  life,  which  should  carry  with  it  its  own  moral  inspirations  and  sanctions — 
and,  finally,  that  this  broadly  liberal  vocational  education  shall  be  for  all, 
rich  and  poor  alike,  without  exception.  This  ideal  offers  a  suggestion  of 
the  line  along  which,  ultimately,  the  divorce  between  theory  and  practice 
will  be  overcome;  and  in  the  working-out  of  this  hope  the  unity  of  the 
primitive  world  of  social  education  will  find  its  way  back  into  our  modern 
life,  carrying  its  highest  moral  controls  and  sanctions  in  its  own  activities, 
not  implicitly,  however,  as  in  that  primitive  world,  but  consciously,  now, 
and  explicitly. 

But  it  must  be  added  that,  however  desirable  such  a  consummation 
may  be,  no  one  is  able,  at  present,  to  offer  working  details  of  a  method 
by  which  it  may  be  realized.  This  is  the  largest  constructive  educational 
task  that  our  educational  thinking  has  formulated.  In  comparison  with 
it  the  task  of  experimental  determination  of  the  mental  conditions  under 
which  certain  specific  forms  of  "learning"  may  be  most  advantageously 
carried  on  is  child's  play.  The  full  statement  of  the  problem  may  be 
given  in  some  such  way  as  this:  How  shall  we  relate  the  various  partial 
forms  of  educational  activity  of  the  present  systems  to  the  complete  and 
concrete  unity  of  the  social  process,  so  that  these  partial  aspects  of  life 
shall  be  made  to  open  out  upon  that  world  of  complete  human  activity, 
in  which,  alone,  whether  for  education  or  for  occupation,  the  individual 
can  actually  find  the  social  support,  coercion,  and  constructive  criticism 
which  give  vitality  and  meaning  to  individual  endeavor?  How  shall  the 
implicit  values  of  primitive  education  be  restored  in  explicit  form  in  the 
complicated  world  of  the  present? 


IO  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

This  question  will  always  be  relevant,  even  though  the  ideal  mentioned 
above  should  be  in  large  measure  realized.  For  even  a  vocational  educa- 
tion may  lack  some  of  the  elements  of  social  self-consciousness,  social  out- 
look, and  acceptance  of  a  share  of  social  responsibility  which  are  necessary 
elements  in  the  genuinely  ethical  life  today.  It  is  not  enough  that  the 
individual  be  honest,  industrious,  frugal,  and  law-abiding.  It  is  essential 
that  he  share  in  the  life  of  the  world,  which  is  his  social  community,  as  the 
primitive  man  shared  the  life  of  his  world.  So  whether  for  the  present 
situation,  or  for  some  future  condition,  the  consideration  of  the  moral 
phases  of  educational  activities  is  a  task  that  must  be  thoughtfully  faced 
and  constructively  handled. 

To  the  critical  consideration  of  some  contemporary  treatments  of  this 
subject  we  must  now  turn. 


III.  THE  NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION:  SOME 
TENTATIVE  ANSWERS 

The  universal  demand  for  an  educational  practice  that  shall  secure 
larger  moral  results  has  already  been  noted.  We  need  not  dwell  upon 
the  ideal,  but  attention  may  be  called  to  the  fact  that  this  demand  is  taking 
deeper  and  deeper  roots  in  social  consciousness,  local,  national,  and  inter- 
national ;  and  that  it  is  expressing  itself  in  the  form  of  criticisms  of  present 
practices  and  theories,  in  hints  and  schemes  for  the  remaking  of  present 
practices,  in  national  and  international  conventions  for  the  spread  of 
information  and  the  deepening  of  the  social  consciousness  of  the  world, 
in  national  and  international  inquiries  for  ascertaining  the  exact  status 
of  the  moral-education  situation  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  for  the  secur- 
ing of  a  new  and  definite  foundation  upon  which  to  build  wisely  and  widely. 
The  problem  is  not  a  local  one,  for  the  world  is  no  longer  made  up  of  local 
and  isolated  communities.  In  reality,  the  problem  includes  the  world- 
wide situation:  the  individual  lives  in  a  community  that  has  relationships 
with  the  ends  of  the  earth,  and  that  draws  its  support  from  all  lands.  We 
share  the  offerings  of  all  the  world:  our  food,  our  clothing,  our  ornaments, 
our  household  comforts,  our  implements,  our  amusements,  our  ideas, 
and  our  ideals — who  shall  say  whence  all  these  come  to  us  ?  To  be  sure, 
there  is  a  fallacious  popular  political  economy  and  social  ethic  that  teaches 
that  an  exchange  of  services  can  be  carried  on  on  the  impersonal  level; 
that,  e.  g.,  eating  the  rice  of  Japan,  if  we  have  fully  paid  for  it,  we  are  in  no 
sense  morally  related  or  bound  to  the  producers  of  it.  But  the  higher 
social  consciousness  is  able  to  see  the  essential  moral  nature  of  all  human 
relationships,  whether  between  neighbors  in  the  same  flat,  or  neighbors 
on  the  other  side  of  the  world.  Our  moral  relationships  are  as  wide  as 
our  commercial  relationships.  The  problem  of  moral  education  is  to 
determine  how  these  moral  relationships  which  are  unrecognized  and 
implicit  in  all  our  world-life,  both  in  the  immediacy  of  the  local  community 
and  in  the  largeness  of  the  world,  shall  become  explicit  and  effective  in 
social  consciousness.  But,  before  we  take  up  the  intrinsic  logic  of  this 
problem,  we  must  turn  to  the  consideration  of  some  of  the  ways  in  which 
the  facts  are  being  conceived  and  treated  in  contemporary  educational 
thinking  and  practice. 

Just  as  the  common  conceptions  of  general  educational  practices  are 


12  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

thoroughly  provincial  in  form,  so  it  seems  difficult  for  many  to  see  the  larger 
aspects  of  this  problem  of  the  moral  elements  in  education,  and  their  rela- 
tions to  the  whole  social  problem.  For  the  most  part,  of  course,  this 
provincialism  is  due  to  a  lack  of  psychological  insight;  moral  education  is 
confined  to  special  provinces  of  life,  or  it  is  in  terms  of  special  materials; 
the  impartation  of  particular  ideas,  called  moral,  or  the  working-up  of 
special  forms  of  feelings  and  sentiments,  or  the  production  of  that  abstract 
Kantianism  "a  good  will,"  with  no  convincing  insight  into  the  processes  by 
which  these  very  desirable  elements  do  really  develop.  We  shall  note, 
here,  some  of  these  ways  of  handling  the  problem. 

Much  of  the  present-day  insistence  upon  moralized  education  finds  its 
psychological  warrant,  as  well  as  its  historical  background  and  justification, 
in  the  psychology  and  pedagogy  of  Herbart,  and  the  work  of  the  Herbartians 
in  Europe  and  America.  In  general,  this  constructive  movement  has  stood 
for  a  direct  method  of  moral  instruction,  claiming  for  this  method  the 
authority  of  Herbart's  psychology,  which  asserts  that  all  our  mental  facul- 
ties, including  the  will  and  conscience,  are  rooted  in  the  "circle  of  thought," 
and,  therefore,  that  education  consists  in  introducing  into  this  "circle  of 
thought"  ideas  which  shall  act  powerfully  in  the  production  of  a  good  life. 
There  is  a  very  insidious  charm  in  the  simplicity  and  comprehensiveness  of 
this  theory.  So  great  is  this  charm,  and  so  insidious,  that  Professor  John 
Adams  has  said:  "Even  if  this  theory  is  not  true,  teachers  ought  to  wish 
that  it  were,  and  to  act  as  if  it  were."1  The  general  pedagogical  principle 
has  been  fully  exploited  in  Europe  and  America.  In  America  the  effort 
has  been  sustained  by  the  National  Herbart  Society,  and  for  a  time  it 
seemed  that  "Herbartianism"  would  become  the  actual  basis  of  all  peda- 
gogy. Great  good  has  come  from  the  work  done  by  this  society,  and  the 
yearbooks  of  the  society  are  filled  with  valuable  materials.  But  to  a  large 
extent  the  most  valuable  materials  are  those  which  have  been  called  forth 
in  criticism  of  the  general  point  of  view.2  The  criticism  aroused  has  been 
exceedingly  fruitful,  and  the  certain  end  of  the  Herbartian  propaganda 
is  to  be  seen  in  the  fact  that  the  National  Herbart  Society  has  become,  in 
recent  years,  the  National  Society  for  the  Scientific  Study  of  Education, 
giving  up  its  propagandist  tendencies  and  taking  up,  seriously,  the  actual 
scientific  study  of  the  problems  which  underlie  the  realization  of  a  scientific 
pedagogical  practice. 

But  in  England  the  vogue  of  direct  moral  instruction  through  the  use 

1  In  some  unpublished  lectures. 

2  Especially  the  work  of  Dewey;  e.  g.,  "Interest  as  Related  to  Will,"  in  the  Supple- 
ment to  the  Third  Yearbook. 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION  1 3 

of  this  Herbartian  principle  seems  to  be  gaining  strength.  The  Moral 
Instruction  League  of  England  issued,  in  1908,  a  circular  entitled  Moral 
Instruction — What  It  Is  and  What  It  Is  Not.  Here  moral  instruction  is 
denned  as  the  "  training  of  the  children's  feelings,  judgment,  and  will,  in 
order  to  insure  that  they  play  the  part  of  good  citizens  in  the  family  and 
country  and  as  members  of  humanity."  ThisTs,  of  course,  a  very  high 
ideal,  a  "consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished."  But  it  is  to  be  noted  by 
way  of  criticism  that  this  ideal  assumes  the  existence  of  the  child's  feelings, 
judgment,  and  will,  prior  to  the  training,  as  faculties,  and  that  it  under- 
takes to  train  these  pre-existent  "faculties"  to  certain  specific  ends.  In 
further  explanation  the  statement  of  the  league  goes  on  to  point  out  that 
"moral  instruction  proceeds  by  means  of  set  lessons  or  conversations 
definitely  directed  to  moral  subjects."  A  list  of  these  "moral  subjects" 
is  given,  as  follows: 

The  subjects  of  moral  instruction  comprise  temperance  (i.  e.,  general  self- 
control),  courage,  patience,  prudence,  perseverance,  kindness,  generosity,  mercy 
sincerity,  truthfulness,  modesty,  conscientiousness,  honor,  industrious  habits, 
justice,  probity,  right  use  of  wealth,  social  service,  duties  of  citizenship,  respect  for 
various  forms  of  religious  belief  and  practice,  co-operation,  international  fraternity, 
art  and  nature,  ethical  elements  in  history,  biography,  and  history. 

In  a  single  paragraph  the  ideal  of  "moral  education"  as  distinguished 
from  "moral  instruction,"  is  set  forth  as  follows: 

Moral  education  embraces  a  much  wider  field.  It  may  or  may  not  include 
systematic  moral  instruction  in  the  essence  just  defined.  It  seeks  to  give  a  domi- 
nant ethical  tendency  to  the  whole  process  of  the  child's  training  in  the  home  and 
school,  by  lessons  that  call  out  the  social  sentiments,  by  studies  that  exercise  the 
moral  judgment,  by  occupations  that  discipline  the  will  to  mutual  consideration 
and  service,  and  by  impressing  upon  the  imagination  the  duty  of  subordinating 
all  intellectual  and  practical  activity  to  the  common  welfare. 

This  is  all  the  league  has  to  say  on  the  broader  aspects  of  the  subject; 
and  even  in  these  few  words  the  child  seems  lost  under  the  burden  of 
external  institution  and  idea,  and  a  sort  of  forced  altruism  that  must  be 
assimilated  in  rising  to  the  level  of  "common  welfare."  The  primary 
interest  of  the  league  is  in  moral  instruction,  and  its  more  detailed  explana- 
tion of  the  processes  of  this  instruction  throws  light  upon  the  league's  con- 
ception of  educational  activity,  in  general.  In  answering  the  question,  What 
is  moral  instruction?  the  circular  states:  (1)  "It  is  an  interesting  presenta- 
tation  of  the  facts  of  the  moral  life."  (These  "facts"  are  said  to  be  "judi- 
ciously selected  instances  of  men,  women,  and  children  engaged  in  active 


14  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

well-doing."  But  there  seems  to  be  no  conception  on  the  part  of  the  authors 
of  the  circular  that  such  "facts"  are  not  facts  at  all  for  a  child,  but,  for 
the  most  part,  and  save  as  consciously  controlled  by  the  teacher,  they  are 
abstractions,  pure  and  simple,  out  of  a  world  of  unrealities.)  (2)  "It 
trains  the  judgment  by  reasoning  and  questioning."  (Again,  it  is  pointed 
out  that  the  reasons  and  questions  are  related  to  those  selected  instances, 
for  the  sake  of  unity.  But  this  makes  of  judgment  and  reasoning  highly 
intellectual  and  abstract  functions,  instead  of  vital  and  concrete  processes 
of  realization  of  meanings  and  adaptation.)  (3)  "It  draws  from  an  unre- 
stricted variety  of  sources."  E.  g.,  "A  simple  lesson  in  astronomy  brings 
out  the  idea  of  law  and  order  as  revealed  in  the  motions  of  the  planets, 
of  the  regular  and  inevitable  results  of  the  earth's  seasons,  tides,  etc.; 
and  the  children  may  then  be  led  on  to  the  conception  of  obedience  to  natural 
law;  while  this  again  prepares  the  way  for  obedience  to  social  obligations. 
And  so  in  other  sciences."  (4)  "Its  area  is  co-extensive  with  all  ages  and 
all  nations." 

But  we  need  not  dwell  longer  on  this  commonplace  and  external  method 
of  dealing  with  the  vastest  issues  of  education.  There  is  another  aspect 
of  direct  moral  instruction  that  has  had  its  support  in  an  appeal  to  some 
emotional  constituent  of  experience  for  additional  sanction.  This  additional 
sanction  has  usually  been  found  in  religion,  though  at  times  in  other  of 
the  higher  emotions  and  sentiments.  There -are  some  who  affirm  that 
moral  education  is  impossible  without  some  such  appeal,  and  that  mere 
moral  instruction  of  the  direct  sort  is  useless,  if  not  impossible.  "Without 
ligion  the  teacher  has  no  basis  for  reproving  a  child  for  wrong-doing. 
He  has  nothing  to  put  before  him  as  an  encouragement  for  doing  good, 
or  as  an  explanation  of  what  he  wishes  the  child  to  consider  bad.  There 
is  nothing  to  give  the  child's  mind  the  capacity  for  understanding  the 
difference  between  right  and  wrong."  At  the  International  Moral  Congress 
of  1908,  Dr.  Felix  Adler  insisted  that  moral  education  should  be  left  entirely 
to  voluntary  associations  because,  he  said,  it  is  impossible  to  impress  moral 
— 1  ideas  without  direct  or  implied  reference  to  some  fundamental  religious 
or  philosophical  system,  and  the  state  must  not  bring  such  things  into 
its  schools.  The  utter  formalism  of  this  .conception  does  not  seem  to  be 
readily  apparent.  The  unrelatedness  of  such  teaching  can  be  seen  in  the 
German  schools,  where  a  complete  system  of  moral,  or  religious,  education, 
based  upon  this  sort  of  theory,  is  carried  on;  and  in  France,  where  a  more 
definite  system  of  moral  education,  based  upon  patriotism  and  "the  sense 
of  sociality,"  using  as  its  text,  not  the  Bible,  but  the  "sacred  book  of  the 
human  soul,"  is  in  vogue.      Both  in  Germany  and  in  France  the  teaching 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION  1 5 

is  under  state  control;  and  in  both  countries  the  results  are  intellectual, 
and  not  vital  and  personal,  save  with  the  few  who  can  understand. 

For  direct  moral  instruction,  whether  based  upon  its  own  intrinsic 
meanings,  or  upon  some  emotional  appeal,  does  not  seem  to  get  into  the 
heart  of  the  problem.  Hence,  there  is  a  growing  feeling  that  some  indirect 
form  of  instruction  must  be  devised  by  which  moral  results  can  be  secured 
in  the  regular  course  of  education,  moral  materials  slipped  into  the  educa-  _ 
tional  activities  without  betraying  their  real  character.  But  there  is  a 
conflict  of  opinion  here.  Can  moral  results  be  secured  in  such  ways? 
At  the  International  Moral  Congress  of  1908  this  question  aroused  long 
debate.     Canon  Glazebrook  held  that  moral  instruction  could  come  only 

from  history,  literature,  and  the  Bible.     To  try  to  get  moral  lessons  out 

of  arithmetic  was  to  revive  the  errors  of  Pythagoreanism.  But  Mr.  Gustav 
Spiller  held  that  all  subjects  might  be  made  to  yield  ethical  lessons  without 
violating  the  facts.  Mr.  Gautrey,  of  the  London  Teachers'  Association, 
held  that  moral  education  of  the  child  should  permeate  the  whole  course 
of  instruction.  It  should  not  be  confined  to  particular  lessons,  but  it  should 
be  the  atmosphere,  the  spirit  of  the  school.  But  he  did  not  tell  how  this 
was  to  be  brought  about. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  can  so-called  " moral  materials"  be  introduced 
into  the  school  activity  in  such  a  way  that  they  will  produce  moral  results 
by  indirection?  Can  morality  be  smuggled  into  a  child?  Several  "sys- 
tems" have  been  proposed  to  this  end.  The  "Brownlee  System"  centers 
the  work  of  the  school,  for  a  month,  around  some  " moral"  word,  e.  g., 
temperance.  This  word  is  engraved  on  banners  hung  about  the  school-^ 
room,  it  is  on  banners  carried  in  the  school  marchings,  etc.,  and  it  is 
made  the  subject  of  five  minutes'  conversation  in  class,  daily  during  the 
month.  Living  with  this  word  for  a  month  is  supposed  to  teach  it  thor- 
oughly. It  is  explained  that  the  psychology  underlying  this  is:  "Thoughts 
are  things";  i.  e.,  if  the  child  can  be  made  to  think  the  idea  long  enough 
he  will  become  possessed  of  the  idea.  But,  of  course,  the  real  psychology 
of  the  situation,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  will  be  that  acts  produce  habits, 
and  habits  are  impervious  to  mere  ideas;  so  that  before  the  end  of  the 
month  most  of  the  children  will  have  become  wholly  immune  to  these 
extrinsic  ideas. 

Another  "system"  of  the  same  general  character  is  the  so-called  "Fair- 
child  System" — "The  New  Moral  Instruction."  The  announcement 
of  this  system  says:  "Character  has  always  been  asserted  by  American 
educators  to  be  the  chief  concern  of  education,  but,  heretofore,  no  satis- 
factory way  of  teaching  morals  has  been  available."    But  now  "A  new 


1 6  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

moral  instruction  which  is  surprisingly  influential  and  interesting  is  offered 
for  general  use  in  American  schools."  This  new  system  is  explained  as 
follows: 

(i)  A  short  course  of  "illustrated  morality  lessons"  as  text  lessons  (i.  e.,  a 
stereopticon  lecture  on  morality).  The  photographs  are  all  from  real  life  and  the 
moral  convictions  of  the  best  people  are  explained  in  practical  application,  so 
that  the  discussion  seems  important  to  the  children,  and  carries  influence.  In 
time  there  will  be  a  course  of  thirty-six,  three  for  each  year  of  primary,  grammar, 
and  high  school.  (2)  A  special  instructor  employed  by  the  board  of  education 
in  each  large  city,  to  deliver  the  illustrated  lessons  in  school  assembly  halls  through- 
out tlie  city.  (3)  Review  and  discussion,  enforcing  the  assembly  instruction,  by 
-teachers  and  principals.  (4)  A  corps  of  traveling  instructors  to  serve  smaller 
cities,  churches,  settlements,  etc.,  each  assigned  a  district  and  headquarters. 
(5)  A  supply  of  text  lessons  to  be  provided  by  the  Moral  Education  Board,  an 
educational  philanthropy  representing  all  interests  and  self-supporting  through 
rentals  and  lesson-fees. 

This  plan  comes  recommended  by  many  prominent  citizens  and  educa- 
tors, and  the  Moral  Education  Board  is  made  up  of  representative  men  and 
women  from  all  parts  of  the  country.  These  lectures  have  been  given 
before  audiences  in  many  colleges,  high  schools,  grade  schools,  churches, 
etc.,  and  the  testimonials  presented  show  that  a  real  effect  has  been  pro- 
duced. Among  the  lecture  titles  are  the  following:  "What  I  Am  Going 
to  Do  When  I'm  Grown  Up,  or  the  Utility  of  Education" — to  be  given 
in  the  upper  grammar  grades;  "The  True  Sportsman,  Ethics  of  Athletic 
Games" — for  the  high  school;  and  "What  Men  Think  about  Boy's 
Fights,  or  Problem  of  Personal  Encounter" — for  the  lower  grammar 
grades. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  these  lectures  can  be  made  to  yield  some  valuable 
results.  But  it  is  too  much  to  claim  that  this  is  a  solution  of  the  problem 
of  moral  education,  or  even  of  moral  instruction.  It  has  the  inherent 
vice  of  all  the  traditional  educational  practices — it  expects  tlie  child  to 
absorb  ready-made  ideas.  The  fact  that  these  ideas  are  the  "moral  con- 
victions of  the  best  people"  does  not  answer  this  criticism.  The  whole 
conception  of  modern  education  is  centered  in  the  creative  activity  of  the 
child;  certainly  that  activity  cannot  be  dispensed  with  in  this  most  intimate 
world  of  moral  ideals.  The  real  values  of  this  system  are  to  be  found  in 
the  statement  of  one  critic  that  it  is  a  sort  of  "moral  nickel  theater."  As 
an  attempt  to  utilize  the  amusement  methods  of  the  cheap  theaters  for 
moral  ends  it  has  a  wide  field  of  possible  usefulness. 

With  no  intention  totally  to  condemn  these  efforts  toward  a  more  com- 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION  17 

plete  educational  practice,  it  still  may  be  pointed  out  that  they  show  the 
survivals  of  antiquated  points  of  view  in  the  sciences  which  underlie  educa- 
tion. The  psychology  of  both  the  direct  and  indirect  methods  set  forth" 
above  is  of  the  association  type — good  psychological  doctrine  in  the  days 
of  Herbart,  i.  e.,  in  pre-evolutionary  times.  Its  fundamental  error  was 
in  its  insistence  upon  the  intellect  as  the  primary  factor  in  mental  life, 
and  its  consequent  ignoring  of  the  logic  of  development,  and  the  place  of 
activity  in  the  processes  of  growth,  with  its  corollary,  the  idea  as  an  instru- 
ment of  control.  The  ethics  of  these  systems  shows  a  like  error.  There 
is  an  overemphasis  upon  the  part  which  society  contributes  to  the  develop- 
ment of  control,  a  burdening  of  the  child  beneath  the  weight  of  social 
habits  and  institutions,  and  a  complete  ignoring  of  the  creative  activity  of 
the  individual  in  the  moral  world.  Over  against  all  these  attempted  solu- 
tions of  the  problem  of  moral  education  we  may  set  the  simple  statement 
of  Professor  Foerster:  "The  ethics  of  the  future  will  be  based  upon  the 
evolution  of  the  inner  life."1 

There  is  one  other  interpretation  of  the  present  situation,  with  accom- 
panying tentative  solution,  that  must  be  discussed  before  we  leave  this 
division  of  our  subject.  This  discussion  of  the  situation  is  especially 
worthy  of  consideration  because  it  shows  a  tendency  of  educational  thought 
and  practice  away  from  the  extreme  intellectualism  of  the  previous  systems 
and  in  the  direction  of  a  more  functional  interpretation  and  construction 
of  the  world.  According  to  this  present  point  of  view,  the  solution  of  the 
present  problem  in  education  can  be  secured  only  by  carrying  the  whole 
process  of  education  back  into  a  corporate  community,  resembling  the 
primitive  community-group,  in  which  the  educational  activities  shall  be 
implicit  in  the  whole  organization  of  the  group,  and  by  means  of  which 
those  activities  and  processes  shall  secure  the  immediacy  of  appeal,  and  the 
vitality  of  sanction  which  they  held  in  the  primitive  group.  It  is  held  that 
if  such  a  corporate  life  could  be  organized  it  would  assure  the  completeness 
of  education  which  primitive  education  possessed. 

In  England,  this  ideal  is  appearing  under  the  concept  of  the  "cor- 
porate life  of  school."2  It  has  its  warm  defenders,  especially  in  the  great 
public  schools,  in  which,  since  the  days  of  Arnold  at  Rugby,  something 
of  this  ideal  has  been  present.  The  plan  as  at  present  operative  has  been 
described  in  detail  in  the  literature.  The  school  becomes  a  sort  of  organic 
and  self-sufficient  group,  in  which  certain  educational  activities,  forces, 

1  Bibliotheque  du  Congres  International  de  Philosophie,  Vol.  II,  pp.  403-12. 

2  See  articles  of  J.  J.  Findlay  and  H.  Bompas  Smith  in  Moral  Instruction  and 
Training  in  Schools,  edited  by  Professor  M.  E.  Sadler  (London,  1908). 


1 8  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

ideas,  ideals,  sentiments,  and  wills  are  active;  and  it  results  in  the  com- 
plete adaptation  of  the  individual  to  the  situation,  or,  in  the  event  of  his 
lack  of  adaptability,  in  his  expulsion  from  the  group.  There  is  much  to 
commend  in  the  plan  as  proposed.  There  is  need  of  a  more  unified  world 
in  which  the  early  developmental  processes  can  be  carried  on,  in  terms  of 
the  absorption  of  social  habit  rather  than  in  the  presence  of  the  disintegrat- 
ing influences  of  the  overstimulating  conditions  of  the  full  blare  of  our 
world-life,  today. 

But  the  general  discussion  of  the  proposition  usually  neglects  or  ignores 
the  more  fundamental  fact  that  no  isolated  concrete  community,  such  as  a 
school,  can  fully  represent  the  world  of  action  today,  and  that,  accordingly, 
the  practice  in  social  habits  attained  in  such  a  community  will  not  insure 
complete  social  functioning  in  the  larger  community  of  the  world.  Indeed, 
practical  schoolmen  in  the  English  public  schools  are  recognizing  and  calling 
attention  to  the  practical  failure  of  this  proposed  solution.  At  the  Inter- 
national Moral  Education  Congress  of  1 908  Sir  Arthur  Hort,  headmaster  of 
Harrow,  asked:  "Why  does  the  sense  of  corporate  life  once  gained  in  a 
miniature  world  not  more  often  develop  into  patriotism  and  similar  vir- 
tues?"    And  Professor  Muirhead,  before  the  same  congress,  said: 

The  virtue  of  patriotism  or  solidarity,  as  taught  and  practiced  in  schools,  is 
of  a  narrow  and  exclusive  kind.  It  trains  a  boy  to  give  himself  up  for  his  cricket 
club,  his  school,  or  afterward  his  college;  but  it  rarely  extends  beyond  the  school 
or  the  college  to  the  university  or  the  country  at  large.  A  public-school  boy  will 
do  a  great  deal  if  you  appeal  to  him  on  the  class  side,  but  he  is  deaf  to  all  appeals 
from  his  city,  his  county,  or  his  country. 

This  discussion  has  carried  us  into  the  heart  of  the  psychological  prob- 
lem of  the  possibility  of  ''generalized  habits,"  or  the  transfer  of  training 
from  one  field  of  activity  to  another,  more  or  less  related.  The  funda- 
mental reason  why  the  public-school  boy  does  not  carry  his  school  habits 
over  into  the  world  of  action  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  there  is  a  funda- 
mental difference  between  the  school  community  and  the  world  community, 
and  habits  are  related  to  likeness  of  community.  Habits  built  up  in  one 
community  will  function  in  another  community  sufficiently  like  the  first 
to  offer  the  sufficient  stimuli.  But  the  school  community  and  the  world 
community  of  the  present  are  essentially  unlike,  and  they  cannot  be  made 
like  by  any  such  isolation  of  the  school  from  life.  The  school  community, 
as  isolated  in  the  English  public  schools,  is  a  concrete  community  of  the 
primitive  sort,  in  some  degree.  But  the  world  community  of  today  is  not 
concrete:  it  is  highly  abstract,  both  socially  and  scientifically.  It  gets  a 
certain  amount  of  concreteness  in  terms  of  transcontinental  railroad  lines, 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION 


J9 


world-encircling  steamship  lines,  telegraph  and  cable  lines,  wireless  teleg- 
raphy, international  diplomacy,  world  travel,  international  magazines,  etc., 
but  in  the  main  it  is  a  great  abstraction. 

Now,  recent  experiments  in  the  transfer  of  practice,  i.  e.,  habits,  from 
one  field  to  another,  have  shown  that  in  so  far  as  the  habit  can  be  mediated 
to  consciousness  in  terms  of  its  appropriate  ideas,  the  transfer  can  be  more 
or  less  successfully  made;  and  as  an  educational  principle,  where  the  habit 
does  find  its  expression  in  terms  of  ideas,  the  teacher  may  expect  to  find  it 
actually  carried  over  and  applied  in  wider  fields.  But  not  alone  does  this 
give  wider  range  of  practice:  it  also,  and  this  is  the  more  important  aspect 
of  the  case,  gives  a  wider  range  of  consciousness,  a  larger  grasp  of  ideas  and 
theoretical  phases  of  experience,  and  consequently  it  allows  the  individual 
to  enter  more  fully  into  that  abstract  community — the  modern  world. 

It  would  seem,  accordingly,  that  not  even  the  corporate  life  of  school 
can  be  counted  upon  to  solve  our  problem;  for  its  results  are  partial  on 
the  side  of  practice,  as  the  results  of  the  traditional  education  are  partial 
on  the  side  of  theory:  the  former  ends  in  practice,  in  social  adaptation, 
whereas  the  only  satisfactory  end  of  education,  today,  is  adaptability; 
the  latter,  i.  e.,  traditional  education,  ends  in  mere  theory,  whereas  the 
acceptable  end  of  modern  education  is  theory  at  work  in  construction 
and  reconstruction  of  the  world — in  control — in  power  to  meet  and  mediate 
social  changes. 

What,  then,  shall  we  say?  It  were,  perhaps,  too  much  to  say  what 
Bacon  said  to  the  men  of  his  times  who  held  to  the  older  ways  of  looking 
at  the  world;  but  with  much  allowance  for  the  violence  of  his  language 
the  point  of  his  remark  is  still  pertinent,  especially  the  last  sentence.  He 
says: 

If  there  be  any  humility  toward  the  Creator,  any  reverence  for  or  disposition 
to  magnify  his  work,  any  charity  for  man  and  anxiety  to  relieve  his  sorrows  and 
necessities,  any  love  of  truth  in  nature,  any  hatred  of  darkness,  any  desire  for  the 
purification  of  the  understanding,  we  might  entreat  men  again  and  again  to  dis- 
card, or  at  least  to  set  apart  for  a  while,  these"preposterous  philosophies  which  have 
preferred  theses  to  hypotheses,  led  experience  captive  and  triumphed  over  the 
works  of  God,  and  to  approach  with  humility  and  veneration  to  unroll  the  volume 
of  creation,  to  linger  and  meditate  therein,  and  with  minds  washed  clean  from 
opinions  to  study  it  in  purity  and  integrity.  For  this  (i.  e.,  nature)  is  that  sound 
and  language  which  went  forth  into  the  whole  world  and  did  not  incur  the  con- 
fusion of  Babel;  this  should  men  study  to  be  perfect  in  and  becoming  again  as 
little  children,  condescend  to  take  the  alphabet  of  it  into  their  hands,  and  spare 
no  pains  to  unravel  the  interpretations  thereof,  but  pursue  it  strenuously,  and 
persevere  even  unto  death  (Nat.  and  Exp.  Hist.}  Voll  X,  pp.  370,  371)..  X 


20  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

Is  it  possible  for  us  to  take  into  our  hands  the  alphabet  of  experience 
and,  in  terms  of  the  foundation  sciences,  patiently  linger  and  spare  no 
pains  in  the  effort  to  interpret  the  actual  method  of  experience,  and,  in 
terms  of  its  actual  processes,  to  construct  the  broad  lines,  at  least,  of  the 
educational  theory  which  shall  vitally  and  fruitfully  determine  educational 
practice?    To  this  problem  we  must  next  turn. 


IV.    THE   NATURE    OF   THE   MORAL   IN   EDUCATION: 
AN  ORGANIC  STATEMENT 

The  results  we  have  reached  may  be  briefly  restated,  as  follows :  There 
is  a  growing  demand  for  educational  reconstruction — a  demand  that  has 
not  yet  achieved  much,  because  of  uncertainty  of  method  and  the  need  of 
keeping  the  machinery  moving.  There  has  been  much  reconstruction  of 
educational  theory,  but  this  reform  has  not  penetrated  deeply  enough  into 
the  common  consciousness  to  result  in  consistent  reforms  in  practice; 
nor  has  the  reform  in  theory  carried  with  it  the  definite  condition  that  its 
acceptance  will  presuppose  a  complete  revolution  in  educational  practice. 
There  is  much  unrest,  much  talk  about  ideals,  much  longing  for  better 
things,  much  more  or  less  naive  effort  to  secure  incidental  reforms,  much 
pseudo-scientific  experimentation,  much  uncertainty  as  to  what  ought  to 
be  done,  and  but  very  little  practical  result.  The  press  of  affairs  is  bring- 
ing about  innovations,  some  of  which  do  not  approve  themselves  to  the 
best  thought  of  the  day.  In  the  midst  of  the  situation  there  is  almost  no 
large  leadership — there  are  certain  tendencies,  and  that  is  all.  On  the 
side  of  moral  education  there  is  a  growing  skepticism  that  expresses  itself 
in  the  effort  to  secure  moral  training  by  some  method  of  indirection.  The 
need  of  the  times  seems  to  be  a  fundamental  re-examination  and  recon- 
struction of  the  foundations  of  education,  under  the  leadership  of  modern 
psychology,  logic,  and  ethics,  and  a  profound  restatement  of  educational 
theory  in  terms  of  these  results.  This  theory  must  be  completely  functional 
and  instrumental,  keeping  close  to  the  demands  of  both  the  world  com- 
munity and  the  individual's  processes  of  development.  It  must  detail 
the  processes  by  which,  in  concrete  reality,  the  child  attains  the  maturity 
of  its  "power  on  its  own  self  and  on  the  world"  which  is  the  mark  of  the 
educated  man.  In  this  study  we  cannot  hope  to  cover  the  whole  field. 
But  on  the  basis  of  what  has  already  been  set  forth  we  may  be  able  to  deal 
with  so  much  of  this  field  as  may  be  necessary  to  show  the  organic  founda- 
tions upon  which  a  vital  moral  education  must  be  grown,  and  the  organic 
processes  which  must  be  used  in  promoting  and  securing  that  growth. 

Our  foundational  presuppositions  are  to  be  found  in  scientific  recon- 
structions of  psychology,  logic,  and  ethics,  whether  this  reconstruction  "be 
termed  pragmatism  or  be  given  the  happier  title  of  the  applied  and  experi- 
mental habit  of  mind."     Functional  social  psychology,  instrumental  logic, 


22  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

and  the  ethics  of  the  inner  life  of  developing  control — these  must  mark 
out  our  way.  In  the  course  of  the  argument  the  specific  demands  of  each 
of  these  will  be  considered  briefly.  Here  it  is  necessary  to  make  a  brief 
statement  of  the  lack  which  is  felt,  and  which  the  so-called  "moral  educa- 
tion" is  expected  to  supply.  It  was  pointed  out  in  a  previous  section  that 
much  of  our  knowledge,  today,  is  divorced  from  any  real  experience,  that 
it  is  merely  "erudition,"  in  the  invidious  sense  of  that  word;  and  that, 
on  the  other  hand,  much  of  our  practical  activity  is  merely  "rule  of  thumb" 
practice,  though  the  actual  knowledge  by  which  it  can  be  made  intelligent, 
js  probably  within  the  experience  of  men,  somewhere.  It  was  shown  that 
these  two  phases  of  experience  are  pointing  the  ways  to  two  distinct  tend- 
encies in  education,  one  in  the  direction  of  theory,  with  little  reference  to 
practice;  the  other  with  an  emphasis  upon  practice  and  with  little  care 
for  the  broader  intelligence  that  can  give  practice  its  highest  human  mean- 
ing. Each  of  these  is,  of  course,  partial  and  illiberal.  And  we  .face  the 
distinct  problem  of  an  education  which  shall  include  the  good  in  dach  of 
them,  and  reduce  the  evil  to  its  lowest  terms.  How  shall  the  incomplete- 
ness of  class  education  become  the  completeness  of  a  really  human  sort  of 
education?  How  shall  this  illiberal  fragmentariness  be  done  away,  and 
the  larger  and  more  universal  outlook  and  the  more  liberal  spirit  take  its 
place  ?  The  man  of  science,  or  art,  or  philosophy,  is  dependent  upon  the 
world  of  industry  in  a  way  that,  at  present,  he  does  not  like,  always,  to 
admit;  the  man  who  labors  with  his  hands  is  dependent  upon  the  man 
of  ideas,  the  world  of  theory,  in  a  way  that,  for  the  most  part,  he  neither 
realizes,  nor  cares  to  consider.  We  need  not  discuss  which  is  the  more 
immoral,  the  snobbish  superiority  of  theory  to  practice,  or  the  pathetic 
glorying  of  practice  in  its  "practicality."  Both  are  serious.  The  world  is 
one  community,  today;  and  this  adds  to  the  complexity  of  this  problem: 
there  are  social  relationships  upon  which  we  are  all  dependent,  but  of  which 
we  are  all  more  or  less  ignorant,  and  upon  which  we  do  not  always  choose 
to  inform  ourselves.  The  lack  in  either  case  is  much  the  same,  though 
seen  from  different  points  of  view.  The  man  of  science  needs  to  become 
conscious  of  those  elements  in  the  social  world  which  the  workingman  is 
contributing  to  his  welfare,  and  to  interpret  those  contributions,  not  in 
terms  of  impersonal  relationships,  but  as  the  contributions  of  personalities, 
selves,  like  himself,  to  whom  he  owes  the  same  sort  of  moral  responsibility 
that  he  exacts  from  them;  and  the  workingman  needs  to  become  conscious 
of  the  implicit  relationships  of  dependency  which  he  sustains  to  the  man  of 
the  other  class:  each — both — need  a  developing  social  consciousness,  in 
which  these  implicit  relationships  will  be  coming  more  and  more  into  explicit 


NATURE   OF   THE   MORAL  IN   EDUCATION  23 

realization — into  the  determination  of  the  larger  sense  of  social  fellowship 
and  responsibility,  and  in  which  each  shall  be  interpreted  as  a  personality 
to  the  other — no  longer  as  mere  means  to  life,  but  now  as  ends  in  themselves, 
and  fellow-members  of  the  social  "kingdom  of  ends." 

Tentatively,  and  in  brief,  then,  we  may  say  that  the  lack  which  "moral 
education"  is  expected  to  supply  is  that  social  consciousness  in  which  the 
self  and  all  other  selves  that  relate  to  the  world  of  the  self  shall  appear  explicitly, 
and  in  terms  of  which  individual  responsibility  shall  become  identified  with 
the  social  good.  And  this  shall  serve  as  the  definition  of  the  "moral" 
which  is  sought  for  education,  until  we  shall  have  developed  the  argument 
to  a  point  where  more  detailed  statements  are  possible.  It  will  not  be 
denied  that  this  is  an  essential  constituent  of  education,  and  that  an  inquiry 
which  seeks  to  determine  the  organic  foundations  of  this  constituent,  and 
the  method  of  making  it  real  in  educational  results,  is  pertinent  to  the 
situation,  today,  even  though  such  an  inquiry  must  neglect  certain  very 
valid  elements  in  the  general  problem.  For,  whatever  the  end  which  any 
particular  interest  in  education  may  have  in  view — profession,  trade, 
vocation,  knowledge,  culture,  or  any  other  end — this  element  which  is 
here  called  the  "moral"  has  full  right  to  come  in,  either  as  a  supplementary 
end  in  itself,  or  as  an  integral  part  of  the  proposed  end;  indeed,  it  has  not 
only  the  right  to  come  in,  but,  rather,  no  education  can  be  called  more  than 
mere  instruction  which  does  not  contain  it. 

Stated  formally,  then,  the  end  that  is  sought  in  the  effort  to  make  educa- 
tion moral  is  the  development  of  a  social  self -consciousness  which  not  only 
implicitly  receives,  but  explicitly  understands  and  gives  in  return.  But 
this  formal  statement  must  be  given  fuller  meaning.  Psychology  must 
be  asked  to  give  the  concrete  setting  of  this  consciousness  in  individual  and 
social  living;  ethics  must  be  appealed  to,  to  give  it  content  of  personal  pur- 
pose and  social  relationships;  and  logic  must  come  in  to  give  the  method  of 
the  concrete  realization  of  this  content  in  actual  social  practice,  i.  e.,  in 
educational  activities.  These  will  be  taken  up  in  order,  and  the  effort 
will  be  made  to  set  forth  the  organic  and  functional  relationships  of  this 
educational  end  to  the  whole  of  the  concrete  and  developing  experience. 

A.      THE     PSYCHOLOGICAL    POINT     OF     VIEW    FOR    MORAL    EDUCATION 

The  central  aim  in  education — the  aim  which  the  emphasis  upon  the 
moral  really  represents — is  the  self,  in  its  world  of  social  and  physical 
relationships,  and  conscious  of  the  existence  and  meaning  of  those  relation- 
ships in  terms  of  its  own  experience.  This  central  concept  of  the  self  is 
the  object  of  knowledge  of  social  psychology.     Social  psychology  attempts 


24  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

to  trace  out  the  actual  conditions  under  which,  and  the  intimate  processes 
by  which,  the  self,  or  selves,  of  concrete  experience,  i.  e.,  of  social  and 
moral  relationships,  arise  in  consciousness.  General  functional  psychology- 
deals  with  what  it  calls  the  "adaptation  of  the  organism  (human  or  other) 
to  its  environment."  But  education  is  interested  in  a  much  more  intimate 
study:  the  actual  development,  enrichment,  and  adaptation  in  terms  of 
rising  levels  of  self-consciousness,  of  the  selves  of  everyday  experience. 
The  so-called  "educational  psychology"  of  the  past  has  been,  in  large 
degree,  a  description  of  processes  that  seem  to  be  going  on  inside  the  individ- 
ual. But  educational  practice  really  needs  a  psychology  which  can  deal 
with  the  individual  and  his  development  as  integral  parts  of  the  general 
evolutionary  process,  and  as  a  potential  member  of  the  social  world.  Social 
psychology  is  at  present  attempting  to  work  its  way  through  this  field.  Its 
results  are  not  .conclusive  as  yet,  but  a  rich  field  has  been  opened  up;  and 
the  general  spirit  and  purpose  make  it  most  available  as  an  aid  to  educational 
activities. 

Genetically,  the  basis  of  the  self  is  in  the  native  activities,  the  instincts 
and  impulses  of  the  child.  This  activity  is  the  presupposition  of  conscious- 
ness, and  an  ever-increasing  complexity  of  activity  is  the  presupposition  of 
self -consciousness  and  its  development  into  a  social  world.  Rather,  when 
the  self  finally  rises  into  consciousness,  the  social  world  is  already  there — 
the  self  and  the  other  rise  into  consciousness  together.  This  is  true  also 
of  consciousness  of  objects.  In  the  earliest  life  of  the  child  consciousness 
"must  be  relatively  as  unorganized  and  lacking  in  definite  meanings  as 

are  the  overt  activities  that  go  along  with  it At  first  undefined,  it 

grows  in  definiteness  of  reference  of  content  as  activity  becomes  more  and 
more  complex."  That  is  to  say,  consciousness  grows  in  terms  of  the 
activity  by  which  growing  experience  constructs  the  world.  This  construct- 
ive activity  has  a  twofold  reference.  Comenius  speaks  of  an  "old  proverb" 
which  says:  "We  give  form  to  ourselves  and  to  our  materials  at  the  same 
time."  The  activity  of  the  child  is,  from  the  very  first,  constructive.  It 
is  giving  form  and  meaning  to  the  objects  and  persons  which  make  up  its 
implicit  environment;  at  the  same  time  it  is  giving  content  and  definition 
to  the  consciousness  which  is  slowly  becoming  organized  into  an  intelligible 
world.  t 

Consciousness  rises  at  the  point  of  failure  of  instincts  to  secure  the  sort 
of  experience  which  the  moving  current  of  activity  expects.  Tensions  of 
this  sort  begin  early.  Each  such  situation  requires  an  increment  of  organ- 
ization for  its  solution.  Out  of  the  growing  aggregate  of  these  increments 
the  central  "core"  of  constructed  powers  is  organized.     But  each  such 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION 


25 


intensified  situation  carries  with  it  a  degree  of  emotional  disturbance. 
This  emotion  serves  a  double  purpose,  related  to  the  twofold  nature  of  the 
creative  activity  which  is  here  present.  On  the  one  hand,  the  emotion 
serves  to  evaluate  the  conflicting  terms  in  the  situation,  and  to  give  to  expe- 
rience a  standard  of  value  to  be  used  in  the  choice  of  ends,  or  in  the  con- 
struction of  a  unified  end:  thus  does  emotion  function  in  the  construction 
of  the  world  by  insuring  a  world  that  shall  have  value  to  the  self.  On  the 
other  hand,  this  emotional  situation  really  consists  in  the  struggle  of  these 
ends  to  be  realized  as  possible  selves:  it  is  a  struggle  between  potential 
selves,  and  out  of  this  struggle  a  new  and  larger  self  will  actually  appear, 
an  integral  part  of  which  will  be  the  increment  of  emotional  value  which 
the  struggle  created:  thus  does  emotion  function  in  the  building-up  of  the 
self,  by  making  it  equal  in  value  to  the  world  it  has  created.  Thus  the 
self  and  the  world  arise  together  in  consciousness:  the  values  which  are 
present  in  the  one  are  present  in  the  other  also,  for  those  values  arose 
together  in  those  various  creative  experiences  out  of  which  both  the  self 
and  the  world  have  grown.  ^— ^ 

Now,  primarily,  consciousness  is  social  in  character;  i.  e.,  the  first 
stage  in  the  development  of  the  conflict  which  conditions  the  appearance 
of  consciousness  is  the  emotional  one,  the  stage  in  which  impulses  to  activity, 
or  ends  of  desire,  appear  as  potential  selves — as  members  of  a  social  world. 
This  is  the  prevailing  character  of  the  consciousness  of  the  child  and  the 
primitive  man:  for  these,  the  differentiation  of  objects  as  "things"  as 
distinct  from  personalities  has  not  yet  taken  place.  And  this  differentiation 
does  not  take  place  until  the  individual  has  reached  a  degree  of  organiza- 
tion of  his  mental  processes  sufficient  to  assure  the  control  of  the  materials 
by  powers  that  can  rise  above  the  level  of  emotions,  and  look  upon  the 
situation  as  a  whole,  and  assign  to  each  element  its  proper  place  in  that 
whole:  personal  and  social  elements  to  their  place  in  the  unification  of 
the  end  of  action,  "things"  to  their  place  in  determining  the  means  by 
which  that  end  is  to  be  realized.  This  unified  end  gets  new  value,  for  it 
is  the  self  that  is  to  be;  but  it  is  also  a  less  impulsive  and  more  rational 
self,  for  it  has  been  criticized  in  terms  of  the  means  of  its  realization;  that 
is  to  say,  is  has  definitely  grown  out  of,  and  is  intimately  related  to,  the 
whole  of  the  new  experience-world. 

This  differentiation  of  the  social  from  the  "thing"  is  not  to  be  confused 
with  the  earlier  implicit  recognitions  of  the  differences  between  my  self 
and  other  selves,  or  the  fact  that  my  body  is  not  continuous  with  other 
objects.  The  general  feeling  for  these  differences  may  be  present  early 
in  experience,  but  not  in  terms  of  the  definite  differentiation  between  per- 


26  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

sons  and  things.  This  latter  fact  is  rather  late  in  making  its  appearance. 
With  many  it  never  becomes  an  assured  fact;  and  it  is  easy  for  all  of  us 
to  fall  back  into  the  attitude  of  primitive  animism,  and  to  present  all  the 
world,  again,  in  terms  of  a  social  consciousness.  This  is  what  we  actually 
do  do  in  that  first  stage  in  the  solution  of  problematic  situations  during 
which  the  conflicting  ends  occupy  the  whole  attention,  for  these  present 
themselves  in  emotional  coloring  and  warmth  as  possible  selves>  i.  e.,  in 
a  social  setting.  The  complete  differentiation  of  these  aspects  of  experi- 
ence is  a  function  of  the  growing  complexity  of  experience,  of  developing 
consciousness,  of  power  to  present  the  world  as  a  whole  and  in  parts,  of 
mature  consciousness. 

The  point  to  be  emphasized  here,  constantly,  is  this,  therefore,  that  the 
self  does  not  exist,  ready  made,  with  powers  that  are  to  be  trained.  For 
social  psychology,  .and  for  education,  too,  the  self  and  the  world  arise  together 
in  consciousness;  the  powers  of  the  self  have  to  be  developed,  through  the 
development  of  a  world  calling  for  those  powers.  The  self  reflects  the  world 
that  it  lives  in,  i.  e.,  that  has  risen  into  consciousness  with  it.  Education 
has,  accordingly,  the  problem  of  providing  for  such  creative  situations  in 
the  developing  experience  as  shall  insure  the  rise  of  the  larger  self,  and  the 
more  inclusive  world.  "The  function  of  education  in  a  progressive  nation 
is  not  merely  to  develop  habits  suited  to  a  present  condition  of  life,  but 
also  to  develop  adaptability  that  will  enable  the  individual  to  fit  himself 

ito  new  conditions  as  they  appear.  But  adaptability  is  a  function,  not  of 
habit  or  instinct,  but  of  attention,  of  intelligence,  of  consciousness." 
Two  phases  of  this  situation  obviously  differentiate  themselves  at  this 
point.  The  first  has  to  do  with  the  conditions  and  processes  of  develop- 
ment by  which  the  child  grows  from  its  early  undifferentiated  status  to 
its  later  consciousness  of  self  and  its  specialized  power  over  the  world. 
This  is  specifically  the  problem  of  the  logic  of  experience  and  will  be  taken 
up  in  detail  in  its  proper  place.  The  second  phase  of  the  situation  has  to 
do  with  the  way  in  which  the  mature  individual  achieves  that  completer 
differentiation  of  personal  and  impersonal  elements  which  gives  concrete 
content  to  his  social  self-consciousness  and  actually  makes  him  a  completely 
moral  being.  This,  of  course,  cannot  be  completely  differentiated  from  the 
logical  problem :  in  concrete  experience  all  these  elements  join  to  make  the 
concrete  unity  of  life  and  experience.  But  under  the  discussion  of  the 
ethical  problem  in  education  we  shall  deal  with  this  phase  of  the  complete 
process  of  development.  It  thus  becomes  apparent  how  soon  the  problem 
of  psychology  becomes  differentiated  into  these  more  special  problems.  A 
complete  discussion  of  this  situation  would  demand  the  consideration  of 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION  27 

the  aesthetic  phase  of  experience,  also,  but  this  would  unduly  prolong  the 
treatment,  though  the  point  of  view  will  be  briefly  treated. 

With  a  final  word  as  to  the  problem  of  education  from  the  point  of 
view  of  social  psychology,  we  shall  turn  to  the  other  special  phases  of  the 
discussion.  From  this  point  of  view,  education  is  seen  to  be  the  slow  devel- 
opment and  differentiation  of  experience  on  the  basis  of  the  native  activities, 
instincts,  and  impulses.  On  the  basis  of  these  native  powers  habits  are 
slowly  organized,  which  bring  an  ever-increasing  range  of  the  world  under 
the  power  of  experience.  But  the  world  is  increasingly  complex,  and 
instincts,  impulses,  and  habits  will  be  continually  breaking  down,  and 
experience  will  be  thrown  back  upon  the  necessity  of  reconstruction, 
which  will  involve  the  rise  in  consciousness  of  a  fuller  social  world,  and  in 
time  the  differentiation  of  the  world  of  ends  from  the  world  of  mere  means 
to  those  ends;  but  this  development  will  also  be  both  cause  and  effect  of 
the  development  of  the  perceptual,  presentational,  imaginative,  conceptual, 
reflective,  and  judging  powers,  as  distinct  from  the  mere  feelings  and  the 
overpowering  emotions.  All  these  powers  can  be  abstracted  from  their 
setting  in  concrete  activity,  and  can  be  made  the  objects  of  education  or 
training:  thus,  in  the  past,  has  education  been  intellectualized,  and  life  has 
been  robbed  of  its  concrete  content.  Ideas  have  been  presented  as  pre-existent 
— emotional  and  religious  sanctions  have  been  appealed  to,  to  give  these  for- 
mal ideas  and  powers  logical  value  in  experience,  and  the  whole  world  has 
been  turned  upside  down,  because  of  a  mistaken  point  of  view  in  psychology. 
Today,  educational  psychology  ought  to  become  the  technique  of  the 
organization  of  developing  experience,  with  the  conscious  power  to  keep 
that  experience  constantly  related  to  the  real  world  of  action,  yet  as 
constantly  integral  within  its  own  but  partially  developed  content  and 
power.  In  this  way  will  the  teacher  be  able  to  see  and  to  control  the 
correlative  developments  of  the  self  and  the  world  in  the  consciousness  of 
the  child,  and  to  make  sure  that  the  child's  real  world  shall  be  a  world  of 
its  own  constructive  experience,  within  which  it  can  move  increasingly  as 
master.  Thus  will  the  conscious  world  always  be  the  correlate  of  con- 
structive differentiations  within  the  experience.  And  thus  will  need  of  a 
reconstructive  attitude  toward  experience  be  built  up  and  always  main- 
tained. And  thus  will  the  moral  end  of  a  social  consciousness  and  power  of 
adaptability  be  secured. 

We  must  now  turn  to  the  problem  of  stating  the  more  complete  content 
of  these  formal  terms  that  we  have  been  using  to  this  point.  That  content 
will  appear  in  the  discussion  of  the  ethical  point  of  view,  and  that  will  set 
our  next  problem. 


28  CURRENT  THEORIES   OF   MORAL  EDUCATION 

B.      THE   ETHICAL   POINT   OF   VIEW:     THE   CONTENT   OF   MORAL   EDUCATION 

"Mental  development  is,  at  its  best,  the  revelation  of  an  expanding, 
variegated,  and  beautiful  whole,  of  which  the  right  act  is  a  harmonious 
member."  But  it  is  difficult  for  moral  education,  or  for  any  sort  of  educa- 
tion, save,  perhaps,  aesthetic  education,  to  take  any  such  developmental 
point  of  view.  It  seems  so  evident  and  obvious  that  the  world  has  wrought 
out  certain  results  which  exist  for  the  individual,  and  there  is  a  general 
feeling  that  what  the  world  has  once  done,  the  individual  may  be  excused 
from  doing.  We  are  the  " heirs  of  the  ages " ;  we  "stand  upon  the  shoulders 
of  all  the  past" — this  is  the  general  point  of  view.  Over  against  this  we 
need  to  remind  ourselves  that,  as  Professor  Foerster  says,  "the  ethics  of 
the  future  will  be  based  on  the  evolution  of  the  inner  life."  Our  problem 
is  to  give  this  evolving  inner  life  content,  and  to  point  out  the  pedagogy 
of  this  point  of  view. 

It  is  a  fundamental  postulate  of  modern  ethical  theory  that  the  moral 
life  is  an  achievement  of  the  individual — of  course  in  the  midst  of  a  social 
world — that  the  moral  values  of  the  world's  experience  become  values  in 
the  individual's  experience  only  as  he  re-creates  them  in  vital  situations  which 
his  own  experience  unfolds;  and  that  these  values  arise  in  terms  of  the 
same  logic  of  experience  that  brings  about  the  development  of  our  so-called 
scientific  values.1  This  last  point  will  be  dealt  with  later:  here  we  are 
concerned  with  the  actual  content  of  the  moral  life  as  it  grows  in  concrete 
experience. 

It  is  the  business  of  modern  ethics  to  give  the  historical  and  the  psycho- 
logical description  of  the  processes  by  which  moral  values  are  realized. 
But  in  the  main,  no  dogmatic  statements  as  to  the  actual  content  of  morality 
are  made.  "The  student  is  put  in  a  position  to  judge  the  problems  of 
conduct  for  himself.  This  emancipation  and  enlightment  of  individual 
judgment  is  the  chief  aim  of  theoretical  (ethics)."2 

From  this  point  of  view  the  question  of  content  seems  futile ;  and  yet  it 
seems  to  be  just  the  most  necessary  of  questions  for  the  educator:  What 
shall  be  the  content  of  moral  education  ? 

In  order  to  make  the  problem  more  specific,  let  us  note  that  the  common 
point  of  view  referred  to  above  posits  a  certain  mass  of  materials  which 
are  by  nature  moral,  and  which  it  is  the  business  of  moral  education  to 
inculcate.  We  have  seen  this  method  in  detail  in  a  former  section.  Moral 
precepts,  rules,  and  ideals  are  to  be  forced  into  the  individual,  in  some  way; 

1  For  a  full  discussion  of  this  point  see  Stuart's  essay,  "Valuation  as  a  Logical 
Process,"  in  Dewey,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  p.  227. 

2  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  pp.  iv  and  v. 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION 


29 


usually  this  has  been  accomplished  in  terms  of  mere  memorizing  which 
goes  no  farther  than  a  parrot-habit  which  can  repeat  the  words,  when  the 
proper  stimulus  is  given.  And,  when  this  defect  is  pointed  out,  the  ready- 
answer  is,  that  the  memory  will  hold  these  things  until  such  a  time  as  the 
experience  will  be  in  need  of  them,  and  then  they  will  spring  into  life  and 
vitality  of  meaning;  or,  at  any  rate,  while  the  child  is  learning  these  good 
things,  he  is  kept  out  of  mischief.  rs. 

Of  course,  there  is  a  good  bit  of  fundamentally  bad  psychology  in  this 
statement.  Comenius  pointed  out  long  ago  that  "actual  knowledge, 
virtue,  and  piety  are  not  given  to  men.  These  must  be  acquired  by  educa- 
tion, by  action,  and  by  prayer."  And  our  more  recent  psychology  and 
logic  of  ethics  has  shown  that  the  genuineness  and  reality  of  the  ethical 
values  depends  upon  their  vital  connections  within  experience,  and  their 
relevancy  to  the  situation  in  which  they  are  supposed  to  function.  Recalling 
our  discussion  of  the  rise  of  the  self,  or  of  selves,  in  the  previous  section, 
we  may  say  of  precepts,  or  rules,  or  ideas  of  any  sort,  that  they  have  value 
for  the  developing  self  only  in  so  far  as  the  self  which  uses  them  is  identi- 
fied with  the  self  which  gives  them.  That  is  to  say,  if  the  precept  calls 
for  action — and  of  course,  it  is  valueless  otherwise — it  becomes  a  social 
element,  i.  e.,  it  is  the  heart,  or  the  will,  of  a  self  acting  in  a  social  world, 
and  it  is  only  as  this  precept-self  is  actually  identified  with  the  self  whose 
experience  wrought  out  the  precept  that  it  actually  enters  into  an  experience 
that  has  content  of  meaning.  At  any  rate  it  is  certain  that  the  child  does 
not  and  cannot  make  use  of  the  impersonal  precept,  for  the  child  lives  in  a 
social  world  as  yet,  and  cannot  understand  the  language  that  is  talked 
down  to  it  from  that  level  of  abstraction  where  the  personal  and  the  imper- 
sonal have  been  fully  differentiated. 

Again,  from  this  standpoint  of  the  moral  as  material  which  already  exists, 
we  have  the  constant  problem  of  working  up  the  motive  forces  which  can 
make  this  " moral  knowledge"  become  real  in  moral  action.  This  is  an 
age-long  problem.  In  that  first  great  break  between  the  world  of  immedi- 
ate experience  and  the  world  of  social  theory,  which  grew  out  of  the  question- 
ings of  the  sophists  and  the  work  of  Socrates  and  Plato,  this  question  arose : 
ideas  are  standing  over  against  the  immediacy  of  experience;  the  ideas  seem 
good  to  some,  but  the  many  seem  to  be  able  to  get  along  very  well  without 
them;  how  can  idea  and  experience  be  brought  together — can  the  Good  be 
taught  ?  The  problem  comes  to  mean :  Can  the  controlling  ideas  which 
will  some  day  be  needed  in  order  to  lift  the  self  out  of  its  genetic  thrall 
to  immediate  impulses,  instincts,  and  the  developing  world  of  habits;  or 
by  which  its  immediate  experience  and  its  power  over  the  world  in  prac- 


30  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

tice  will  be  saved  from  overwhelming  multitudes  of  mere  instances — 
can  those  ideas  be  taught  before  the  life  has  need  of  them  ?  Of  course, 
this  question  is  based  on  bad  psychology  and  on  mistaken  conception  as 
to  the  nature  of  the  Good — though  these  mistakes  are  really  identical. 
The  mind  of  the  child  does  not  peer  into  the  future,  or  into  experience 
outside  its  own  range,  for  ideas,  precepts,  or  rules  that  may  some  time 
meet  some  problem  which  has  not  yet  arisen.  Not  only  can  one  not  learn 
what  he  is  going  to  need  at  some  future  time  (until  one  has  formed  a  life- 
purpose  and  has  centered  his  learning  about  the  generalizations  of  his 
specific  problem),  but  he  cannot  even  guess  at  it  in  any  exact  way,  for  unless 
he  allows  his  life  to  settle  down  into  the  impassiveness  of  the  habitual 
and  the  mechanical,  the  future  will  be  full  of  problematic  situations,  and 
there  is  always  something  new  in  every  problem  which  cannot  possibly  be 
predicted  in  advance.  Rules  have  value  in  the  experience  which  has  pro- 
duced them,  or  which  can  reproduce  them.  What  is  actually  to  be  desired, 
rather  than  these  pre-existent  ideas,  is  a  rich  and  fertile  experience  out  of 
which  will  arise  the  appropriate  materials  for  the  solution  of  any  problem. 

But  this  last  statement  gives  us  the  cue  we  desire  for  the  definition  of 
the  content  of  the  moral  for  education.  If  the  good  is  relevant  to  the 
activity-situation,  and  the  solution  of  the  problem  must  rise  out  of  experi- 
ence itself,  then  the  content  of  the  good  must  be  not  a  content  of  materials 
but  a  content  of  method  of  dealing  with  experience  situations.  Professor  #^ 
Dewey  has  said  that  that  which  gives  moral  quality  to  any  situation  is  the 
necessity  for  asking  the  question:  "What  is  the  action  that  is  demanded 
at  this  point?"  and  that  which  brings  in  the  "good"  is  the  asking,  and 
satisfactory  answering  of  these  questions:  "What  are  the  conditions  which 
demand  action  ?"  and,  "What  is  the  action  that  these  conditions  demand  ?" 

That  is  to  say,  the  "good"  is  not  in  some  specific  act,  or  in  some  specific 
way  of  thinking,  or  in  some  precept  or  rule  that  is  to  be  made  to  apply 
at  this  point.  The  good  is  in  the  actual  grasp  of  the  situation,  taking 
into  account  all  the  conditions  that  are  in  question  and  all  the  elements 
that  demand  consideration,  and  all  the  values  that  are  presented  in  con- 
sciousness; and  in  working  out  from  these  a  completely  unified  end,  which 
shall  be  criticized  in  terms  of  the  means  for  its  realization,  and  which 
will  be,  accordingly,  related  to  the  world  of  action.     Cooley  says:    "The 

right  is  the  rational  in  the  large  sense  of  the  word The  right  is 

the  result  of  the  mind's  full  work  in  grappling  with  a  problem."1  The 
right  is  in  mental  integrity. 

But  when  we  have  defined  the  good  in  terms  of  the  method  of  experience 

1  Cooley,  Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order. 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION  3 1 

in  attaining  and  maintaining  its  own  integrity,  we  seem  still  to  have  neg- 
lected some  factors.  What  of  the  relation  of  the  individual  and  the  social  ? 
of  the  place  of  impulse,  and  the  distinction  between  the  " carnal"  and  the 
"spiritual"?  As  to  this  latter  question,  the  answer  lies  in  the  foregoing 
account,  and  in  the  description  of  the  method  by  which  the  self  rises  in  a 
constantly  differentiating  consciousness.  The  moral  problem  that  this 
question  raises  is  no  longer  the  question  of  the  higher  over  against  the 
lower,  of  will  over  against  impulse,  of  the  moral  over  against  the  sensual, 
of  the  rational  over  against  the  irrational.  It  is  wholly  a  question  of  the 
organization  of  these  earlier,  and  less  conscious  and  less  definite  phases 
of  experience  into  the  world  of  the  will,  of  the  moral,  of  the  rational.  It 
is  thus  that  modern  psychology  and  ethics  have  overcome  the  old  dualism 
between  the  higher  and  the  lower,  and  given  unity,  or  the  promise  of  unity, 
to  the  inner  life  of  man.  But  the  logic  of  this  process  will  be  treated  more 
fully  later. 

As  for  the  first  problem  noted  above,  the  relation  between  the  individual 
and  the  social,  this  method  of  regarding  the  problem  is  ready  to  answer 
that  this  old  antithesis  is  no  longer  psychologically  admissible. 

The  process  of  mental  development  may  be  defined  indifferently  from  the 
social  or  individual  side.  Every  act  that  defines  individuality,  defines  the  con- 
sciousness of  others  also.     There  are  no  "special  powers "  by  which  the  individual 

takes  up  social  values Everything  that  tends  to  individualize  and  define 

experience  tends  to  socialize  it  also.  The  two  developments  are  absolutely  cor- 
relative. ■ 

But,  of  course,  this  we  have  already  seen  to  be  the  case  in  our  discussion 
of  the  appearance  of  the  self. 

Social  psychology  is  perfectly  sure  of  its  position,  here.  "The  social 
and  moral  reality  is  that  which  lives  in  our  imaginations,  and  affects  our 

motives."     "The  immediate  social  reality  is  the  personal  idea t 

Society  is  a  relation  among  personal  ideas."2  "Society  is  simply  theV 
collective  aspect  of  personal  thoughts."  "Society  is  rather  a  phase  of 
life  than  a  thing  by  itself  ....  it  is  life  regarded  from  the  point  of  view 
of  personal  intercourse."3  These  are  statements  out  of  the  most  modernj 
doctrine.  But  much  the  same  idea  can  be  found  at  least  as  far  back  as 
Hegel,  e.  g.,  "The  state  finds  in  ethical  custom  its  direct  and  unreflected 
existence,  and  its  indirect  and  reflected  existence  in  the  self-consciousness 
of  the  individual."     "The  state  ....  is  the  realized  substantive  will 

1  King,  Psychology  of  Child  Development,  p.  131. 

2  Cooley,  Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order. 

3  Ibid. 


32  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

having  its  reality  in  the  particular  self-consciousness  raised  to  the  plane 

<  of  the  universal The  individual  has  his  truth,  real  existence,  and 

;  ethical  status  only  in  being  a  member  of  it."1 

But  if  the  objection  still  persists  and  the  plea  is  made  that  the  problem 
of  ethics  is,  after  all,  the  socialization  of  the  individual;  and  that,  therefore, 
the  problem  of  moral  education  is  to  be  stated  in  like  terms,  the  answer 
is  that  this  is  just  what  our  argument  has  led  to,  but  with  reference  to 
more  fundamental  results  than  the  mere  socialization  of  the  individual. 
For  the  individual  must  be  not  only  socialized,  he  must  become  an  individual, 
not  merely  repeating  or  copying  the  world's  life,  but  creative  of  experience- 
values  in  his  own  right  and  person.  If  we  turn  to  the  most  recent  treatise 
on  the  subject  of  the  moral  life,2  we  shall  find  that  a  constantly  increasing 
stress  is  laid  on  the  intelligence  of  the  individual,  and  those  deeper  pro- 
cesses, the  impulses  and  affections,  out  of  which  the  intelligence  rises, 
together  with  the  growing  demand  for  the  transformation  of  customary 
into  reflective  morality  (which  surely  illustrates  the  point  of  the  preceding 
argument) ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  constantly  growing  emphasis 
upon  the  social  nature,  or  rather  the  generalized  nature  of  the  objects  and 
ends  to  which  personal  preferences  are  to  be  devoted.  Or,  as  Hegel  would 
fsay:  "The  universal  is  the  concern  of  every  particular  person.  Every- 
thing depends  upon  the  law  of  reason  being  incorporated  thoroughly  with 
the  law  of  particular  freedom.  My  particular  end  thus  becomes  identical 
with  the  universal."  And  Kant  had  said  even  before  this:  "Act  always 
from  a  principle  fit  for  a  universal  law." 

The  contribution  which  modern  ethical  theory  has  made  to  these  con- 
ceptions of  Kant  and  Hegel  is  to  be  found  in  the  modern  idea  of  the  moral 
as  growing  up  out  of,  but  organically  connected  with,  all  the  other  elements 
in  the  historical  and  psychological  life.  The  purely  instinctive  in  group 
or  individual  life  becomes  the  customary,  or  the  habitual;  and  this  in  turn 
becomes  the  personal,  the  intelligent,  and  the  self-conscious.3  There  is 
progress  here,  but  no  break  of  continuity,  and  no  dualism.  This  makes 
the  problem  of  moral  education  more  simple  and  its  solution  much  more 
possible. 

Thus,  we  have  seen  that  the  ethical  is  the  rational,  the  intelligent,  the 
grasp  of  conditions  and  control  from  within,  the  conscious  self  that  answers 
to  the  actual  conditions  in  the  world  of  action.  The  final  demand  of  the 
moral  life,  and,  accordingly,  of  moral  education,  is  this:   that  the  process 

1  Hegel,  Philosophy  of  Right. 

2  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics. 

3  Ibid. 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION  33 

of  experience  through  the  plastic  years_shall  result  in  the  complete  organi-\ 
zation  of  tfiefproceslses  of  reflection  so  that  the  individual  may  be  prepared  ( 
to  apply  his  experience  at  any  point  where  moral  tension  may  arise.     All  ' 
the  contents  of  experience  are  moral  as  they  minister  to  the  felt  needs  of 
life.     But  not  all  contents  are  usable,  for  to  too  great  a  degree  contents  are 
taken  on  as  so  much  good  in  themselves,  or  as  future  ministers  of  good, 
without  submitting  to  the  logic  of  constructive  experience.     Conscious- 
ness, intelligence,  organization  of  the  contents  of  experience  to  fit  them  to 
the  uses  of  experience,  and  the  organization  of  the  reflective  powers  by 
means  of  this  organization  of  the  contents  of  experience — all  these  are 
bound  up  together  in  the  processes  of  concrete  experience,  and  are  functions 
of  the  developing  self.     The  fullest  development  of  these  is  the  aim  of 
education,  in  general,  but  the  particular  interest  of  moral  education. 

One  word  more.  Nothing  has  been  said,  in  this  section,  about  ideals, 
or  purposes,  or  character,  or  the  necessity  that  is  supposed  to  underlie 
both  education  and  morality.  The  foundation  of  this  discussion  has  been 
the  fundamental  presupposition  of  activity — the  necessity  of  action  which 
inheres  in  experience  itself,  and  without  which  there  could  be  no  experience. 
All  life  is  experience,  and  all  experience  is  educative:  the  necessity  which 
underlies  education  is  found  in  the  question  of  the  psychologist:  "Why 
is  experience  always  reaching  out,  persistently  trying  to  define  itself  more 
and  more  adequately  ?"  and  the  answer  is  given  in  the  words  of  the  ethical 
philosopher:1  "The  moral  necessity  for  education  ....  is  the  necessity/ 
for  knowledge  to  do  what  is  trying  to  be  done,  the  dependence  of  the  unin-  ! 
formed  impulse  upon  means,  method,  and  interpretation."-  Experience  will 
and  must  go  on:  why  should  education  not  accept  that  fact  and  build  upon 
it,  helping  impulse  to  find  its  ideas,  the  growing  will  its  defined  aim,  and 
the  rising  self  its  freedom  by  means  of  a  growing  consciousness  of  values 
and  of  controls  ?  Life  evolves  from  within:  why  should  not  education  work 
from  within,  develop  from  within  ?  Is  not  the  dawning  experience  promise 
of  the  full  world  of  the  future  ?  Why  should  not  education  in  all  its  phases 
become  moral  by  aiming  to  secure  to  the  developing  experience  the  possi- 
bility of  constructive  and  reconstructive  organization  by  which,  in  its  natural 
career,  the  ideals  and  purposes  that  it  needs,  the  world  in  which  to  realize 
those  ideals  and  purposes,  the  controls  that  will  make  it  socially  acceptable, 
and  the  self-consciousness  that  will  make  it  socially  inclusive  and  respon- 
sive, will  all  be  developed  ? 

To  the  more  detailed  logic  of  this  process  we  must  now  turn. 

1  Mead,  "Philosophical  Basis  of  Ethics,"  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  April, 
1908. 


34  CURRENT  THEORIES   OF   MORAL  EDUCATION 

C.      THE   LOGIC   OF   MORAL   EDUCATION 

In  a  previous  section  a  brief  sketch  of  the  character  of  experience  in 
the  modern  world  as  distinguished  from  the  more  primitive  forms  of  expe- 
rience was  given.  A  brief  elaboration  of  that  description  is  called  for  at 
this  point.  Traditional  educational  practice  has  naively  proceeded  on 
the  implicit,  if  not  explicit,  assumption  that  the  world  of  the  adult  experi- 
ence has  objective  existence — as  much  for  the  child  as  for  the  mature  man; 
and  the  logic  of  that  objective  world  has  seemed  to  be  that  its  existence 
lay  in  a  mass  of  particulars,  each  with  its  possible  appropriate  "idea"; 
and  education  was  just  the  process  of  acquiring  those  ideas,  one  by  one — 
"line  upon  line,  precept  upon  precept,  here  a  little  and  there  a  little." 
An  unfortunate  but  rather  natural  misunderstanding  of  the  Herbartian 
doctrine  of  apperception  has  helped  to  continue  that  logical  error  almost 
to  the  present,  in  education;  and  it  has  given  the  scientific  foundation  for 
the  doctrine  of  "direct"  instruction  in  morals. 

Opposed  to  this  lies  the  whole  interpretation  of  experience  from  the 
point  of  view  of  functional  psychology  and  instrumental  logic.  These 
sciences  begin  with  the  activity  of  experience  as  fundamental,  and  they 
point  out  how  in  the  creative  and  re-creative  processes  of  experience  the 
world  of  objective  reality  is  built  up.  This  we  have  already  seen  to  be 
the  case:  the  social  and  the  physical  worlds  are  constructs  of  experience, 
arising  in  consciousness,  evolving  from  within,  and  taking  on  the  charac- 
ters which  the  conditions  of  experience  compel  them  to  assume.  Experi- 
ence is  fundamental,  and  creative,  not  merely  secondary  and  acquisitive. 

But  experience  has  two  general  nodes:  the  instinctive  or  habitual 
and  the  attentive  or  reconstructive.  In  the  primitive  world  instincts  and 
habits  mediate  the  whole  content  of  experience,  save,  perhaps,  that  recon- 
struction which  takes  place  in  the  period  of  adolescence  and  which  is 
given  such  social  significance  by  the  ceremonials  of  many  primitive  groups. 
But  the  complexity  of  our  modern  world  is  constantly  intruding  upon  the 
fixed  forms  of  habit,  and  compelling  the  reconstructive  processes  of  atten- 
tion to  function:  this  is  the  heart  of  modern  world-creativeness,  both  on 
the  side  of  the  social  contents  and  in  terms  of  ''things."  Thus  do  society 
and  the  physical  world  slowly  develop  in  the  consciousness  of  the  indi- 
vidual: not  by  the  mere  addition  of  atoms,  particulars,  facts;  but  by 
the  creative  differentiations  within  habits  and  objects  that  have,  hitherto, 
functioned  satisfactorily. 

There  are  three  specific  levels  of  this  logical  development,  correspond- 
ing to  the  three  levels  of  development  of  the  moral  order  of  experience, 
noted   above.     Experience   begins   in   instinctive    and   impulsive   forms. 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION 


35 


These  practically  fulfil  the  description  of  Kant:  they  are  "forms  without 
content";  i.  e.,  they  are  responses,  modes  of  activity,  inherited  "categories" 
without  definite  or  determined  stimuli.  (A  few  do  have  fixed  stimuli 
from  the  first.)  Corresponding  to  these  "forms"  the  child  manifests 
what  Professor  Dewey  has  called  "direct  attention,"  i.e.,  "attention" 
is  focused  wholly  upon  the  outgoing  activity:  there  is  no  discrimination 
of  stimuli,  in  the  conscious  sense :  only  a  sort  of  blind  seeking  for  content 
to  fill  the  forms  that  are  ready  to  be  filled.  The  child  is  absorbing  the 
world.  There  is  a  sort  of  discrimination  present,  however;  it  is  of  the 
same  sort  which  the  chick  displays  when  it  rejects  the  orange-peel  and 
swallows  the  egg-yolk,  and,  eventually,  disregards  the  orange-peel  alto- 
gether, though  always  accepting  the  other.  This  form  of  discrimination 
is  the  foundation  of  all  the  world-creative  discriminations  and  reconstruc- 
tions of  the  developing  experience. 

Instincts  become  "filled"  with  this  discriminated  content  of  the  implicit 
environment:  these  filled  instincts,  or  instincts  with  their  stimuli  deter- 
mined, or  instincts  organized  into  the  structure  of  the  social  and  physical 
world,  are  habits.  And  here  we  have  risen  to  the  second  level  of  develop- 
ment. But  the  child  reaches  this  level  only  through  the  compulsion  which 
appears  in  the  struggles  between  instincts  to  get  themselves  established 
in  the  world  of  actual  content.  In  those  preconscious  conflicts  and  recon- 
structions the  tools  are  being  forged  with  which  the  more  complex  conditions 
of  experience  are  to  be  conquered.  Sensation  is  present  from  the  first, 
of  course.  But  sensation  slowly  organizes  itself  into  perception  under  the 
demand  of  the  growing  experience  for  a  world  of  meaningful  content. 
But  the  child  must  learn  to  perceive,  as  truly  as  he  must  learn  to  reason. 
A  perception  is  a  real  content  of  meaning  singled  out  of  the  "booming, 
buzzing  confusion"  of  sensation.  But  perception  involves  memory,  and  the 
beginnings  of  judgment,  and  primitive  forms  of  imagination,  and  the 
powers  of  abstraction  and  reflection.  And  so,  with  the  appearance  of 
this  level  of  perception,  we  have  the  beginnings  of  the  distinctively  human 
period,  the  perceptual  order,  and  the  roots  of  that  world-constructive  con- 
sciousness in  which  the  self,  the  social  order,  and  the  world  of  means  will 
appear.  Experience  will  now  begin  to  take  on  the  forms  of  "attitudes," 
and  the  discriminated  instincts  will  appear  under  the  forms  of  "categories 
of  the  understanding." 

On  this  second  level,  experience  will  be  organized  in  the  general  forms 
of  social  habit,  and  the  general  relationships  to  the  social  order  will  be  in 
terms  of  a  customary  morality;  not,  indeed,  the  mere  customary  morality 
of  the  primitive  man — for  the  life  of  the  child  in  the  modern  world  is  con- 


36  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

ditioned  by  forces  which  the  primitive  man  did  not  know;  so  that  the  moral- 
ity of  the  child  in  the  years  from  three  to  ten  will  be  that  of  his  immediate 
society,  conditioned  by  the  implicit  creativeness  of  his  own  reactions  upon 
those  forms:  he  feels  the  fact  of  social  organization  all  about  him,  but  he 
does  not  feel  its  meaning.  Perhaps  it  could  be  said  of  the  primitive  man 
that  in  this  customary  or  habitual  stage — the  mature  stage  of  his  experience — 
he  feels  the  meaning  of  social  organization,  but  does  not  feel  the  fact. 

The  life  of  the  child  expresses  itself  in  this  period  in  the  form  of  volun- 
tary activities,  in  which  attention  is  directed  to  the  working-out  of  some 
practical  end.  The  great  word  for  this  whole  period  is  "practice."  Regu- 
lations, theories,  ideas,  moral  controls  are  all  more  or  less  unnatural, 
extra-experiential,  and  meaningless,  and  he  seeks  to  keep  out  of  their 
way,  in  so  far  as  they  are  obtruded  upon  him  from  without.  None  the 
less,  he  welcomes  ideas,  theories,  powers  of  control,  that  arise  within  the 
practical  situations  which  he  confronts  and  which  justify  themselves  to 
him  as  a  means  for  the  extension  or  the  control  of  experience  to  the  ends 
that  he  seeks. 

But  the  whole  of  his  experience  is  social,  i.  e.,  it  comes  in  terms  of  emo- 
tions and  feelings,  rather  than  in  terms  of  ideas  and  complete  controls. 
Reconstructions  take  place,  of  course,  but  these  reconstructions  possess 
him,  rather  than  vice  versa.  Yet,  of  course,  the  slow  processes  of  time  are 
organizing  the  powers  which  will  carry  him  into  the  distinctive  character- 
istics of  the  next  period. 

In  the  next  general  period  the  child  passes  into  the  fulness  of  personality, 
of  personal  and  intelligent  morality,  and  into  the  expression  of  his  life  in 
terms  of  a  reflective  attention  that  is  able  to  rise  above  the  levels  of  feeling 
and  emotion  and  to  reconstruct  the  world  as  a  complete  and  unified  experi- 
ence. The  whole  social  order,  including  the  personal  self,  has  risen  into 
consciousness,  and  has  been  differentiated  from  the  world  of  physical 
things.  The  power  to  grasp  the  conditions  of  a  problem,  to  carry  the  solu- 
tion through  all  its  various  levels,  and  to  actualize  the  self  of  the  complete 
organization  of  the  situation  marks  the  level  of  logical  and  moral  maturity, 
the  completion  of  "education"  in  the  preparatory  sense,  and  the  capacity  of 
the  individual  for  complete  assumption  of  the  responsibilities  of  member- 
ship in  a  moving  society. 

But  it  is  to  be  noted  that  he  is  not  merely  an  individual  in  the  narrow 
sense  of  that  term.  He  has  developed  in  the  midst  of  social  situations, 
he  has  come  into  conflict  with  social  institutions,  and  has  been  compelled 
to  adjust  himself  continually  to  new  phases  of  the  life  of  society.  He  has 
found  his  growing,  evolving  self  in  and  through  his  finding  of  these  social 


NATURE  OF  THE  MORAL  IN  EDUCATION  37 

conditions,  and  in  the  resistance  which  he  has  constantly  felt  in  society 
he  has  been  compelled  to  remake  himself  continually,  constantly  to  "criti- 
cize his  categories."  The  results  are  apparent.  Every  increment  of  the 
self  has  been  correlative  to  an  increment  in  the  social  order  which  is  his 
creation  of  society.  Society  has  become  a  correlative  part  of  his  unified 
world  of  action. 

Corresponding  to  these  three  levels  of  logical  development,  and  of 
moral  control,  we  may  note  three  levels  in  the  " method  of  reflection," 
the  complete  organization  of  which  was  set  down  as  the  specific  end  of 
education.  Experience  grows  through  reconstructions  in  the  presence  of 
conflict-situations.  Reflection  comes,  finally,  to  be  the  method  of  this 
reconstructive  process,  this  power  of  adaptation.  The  foundations  of 
reflection  were  pointed  out  in  that  primitive  discrimination  which  the  child 
shares  with  the  chick.  The  mature  development  of  this  power  lies  impli- 
citly in  the  organization  of  experience  through  the  plastic  years.  In  its 
complete  organization  we  may  note  three  levels. 

The  problem  begins  in  the  deep  undercurrents  of  experience  which 
lie  far  back  in  the  predispositions,  instincts,  and  habits  of  experience.  This 
is  still  an  obscure  field — the  particular  province  of  genetic  logic.  But  in 
some  way  currents  of  experience  cross  each  other  and  inhibit  the  on-going 
activity.  Inhibitions  arouse  emotions,  and  in  terms  of  emotional  pres- 
entations these  conflicting  currents  of  experience  rise  into  consciousness. 
This  is  the  second  level.  Here  the  struggle  is  between  ends  which  clothe 
themselves  in  all  the  warmth  of  emotion  and  actually  present  themselves 
as  " selves,"  possible  future  selves.  An  older  ethical  theory  looked  upon 
this  situation  as  the  final  stage  in  the  moral  struggle,  and  demanded  that 
choice  should  here  be  made  of  one  or  the  other  of  these  selves,  as  the  only 
solution  of  the  moral  situation  in  moral  terms.  But  to  choose  one  of  these 
selves,  and  to  identify  the  present  with  that  one  only,  is  to  ignore  the  values 
which  give  the  other  self  power  of  appeal.  Unless  moral  choice  is  to  be 
made  to  include  conscious  and  deliberate  exclusion  of  genuine  values,  the 
only  completely  moral  way  to  resolve  the  situation  is  to  carry  the  whole 
conflict  to  a  higher  level  (the  third),  and  in  the  quiet  of  control  which  the 
reflective  power  gives,  to  organize  all  these  values  into  a  unified  end  which 
shall  become  the  object  of  achievement,  the  self  that  is  to  be  actualized. 
But  reflection  must  do  more  than  merely  organize  those  values;  it  must 
organize  them  in  terms  of  the  means  available  for  their  realization.  It 
must  more  clearly  define  the  difference  between  the  end  in  its  relation  to 
the  more  clearly  defined  social  "  kingdom  of  ends,"  and  the  world  of  mere 
means,  the  scientific  phase  of  experience — the  physical  order. 


38  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

The  power  to  rise  to  this  level  of  insight  and  discrimination  and  to 
state  the  problematic  in  terms  of  a  complete  differentiation  of  its  various 
levels  of  elements  is  both  a  logical  and  a  moral  power.  The  distinction 
between  the  two  lies  only  in  the  fact  that  the  moral  has  to  do  with  the 
organization  of  the  end,  while  the  logical  has  to  do  with  the  organization  of 
means  to  that  end:  but  both  are  united  in  an  organic  whole.  And  that 
whole  is  the  end  which  a  completely  moral  education  seeks. 

But  if  objection  be  made  that  this  is  a  purely  formal  end,  lacking  con- 
tent and  not  emphasizing  "character"  and  " ideals,"  the  reply  must  again 
be  made  that  such  an  end  as  this  is  realized  only  on  the  basis  of  the  richness 
of  personal  experience  which  is  the  real  content  of  life,  and  organization 
such  as  this  is  the  very  essence  of  that  character  which  is  able  to  "stand 
four-square  to  every  wind  that  blows."  And  by  giving  vital  meaning  to 
the  "idea";  by  relating  ideas  to  the  initiatory  impulses  in  organic  fashion; 
by  giving  to  the  impulse  this  determinate  outlet  through  ideas  into  a  world 
of  human  meanings:  by  thus  organizing  the  whole  process  of  experience 
a  real  place  is  made  in  experience  for  that  genuine  ideal  that  "grows  for- 
ever as  we  move."  But  especially  does  this  way  of  looking  at  the  whole 
matter  do  away  with  the  fallacy  of  the  existence  of  an  objective  world 
which  needs  to  be  acquired,  and  it  gives  to  experience  the  quality  which 
belongs  in  experience — personal  creativeness.  The  moral  world  thus 
comes  to  possess  the  same  reality  as  the  physical  world  possesses;  or  even 
a  greater  reality,  at  least  a  prior  reality,  as  being  that  for  which  the  physical 
world  is  constructed — the  end  to  which  all  else  is  means. 

And  education,  whether  from  the  logical  or  the  moral  point  of  view, 
becomes  the  ability  to  originate  and  apply  constructively  interpretative 
ideas  at  the  point  of  action.  Thus  is  life  freed  in  all  its  elements;  there  is 
no  need  of  external  repression,  for  all  the  primitive  forces  have  been  organ- 
ized into  the  control  of  the  reflective  processes,  giving  all  the  power  which 
the  primitive  man  possesses  room,  but  subordinating  it  all  in  organic  ways 
to  ^fcfcbntrol  of  the  idea-producing  capacity  of  experience  itself. 


V.     THE  LOGIC  OF  SCHOOL 

The  foundations  of  all  education  are  social.  The  child  does  not  acquire 
a  social  consciousness  or  a  consciousness  of  the  social  world.  His  first 
sense  of  self  is  called  out  by  the  presence  of  other  selves.  The  whole  process 
of  education  goes  on  in  this  social  world.  But  consciousness  grades  down 
from  the  central  region  of  clear  and  explicit  meanings  and  controls  to  the 
fringe  of  uncertainties  and  the  merest  implications  of  meanings.  Under 
the  stress  of  life-conditions  experience  is  constantly  pushing  back  the 
boundaries  of  the  clear  and  explicit  and  drawing  within  its  central  light 
the  shadowy  phases  of  the  implicit:  not  in  any  arbitrary  way,  but  as  the 
actual  needs  of  life  require.  Psychologically,  this  means  the  development 
of  a  more  concrete  self,  and  a  more  determined  social  and  physical  world 
in  which  that  self  may  live ;  ethically,  it  means  a  richer  store  of  experience 
with  which  to  control  the  future  conditions  of  experience,  and  a  clearer 
consciousness  of  the  complex  elements  that  make  up  moral  experience; 
logically,  it  means  the  growing  organization  of  the  reflective  powers  and  the 
ability  to  carry  through  to  ever-more-complete  ends  the  processes  of  recon- 
struction in  experience  and  of  moral  and  physical  world-creativeness. 
Educationally,  it  means  the  entrance  into  more  and  more  of  the  "experi- 
ence of  the  race,"  the  "rich  inheritance  of  the_past,"  the  "understanding 
of  the  present  social  order,"  or  whatever  other  method  of  description  befits 
the  obvious  fact. 

Actually,  the  individual,  child  or  man,  lives  in  two  worlds — the  actual 
world  of  his  own  concrete  experience,  his  own  explicit  world  of  moral 
and  logical  controls,  represented  by  the  general  field  of  consciousness;  and 
that  implicit  and  unknown  larger  world  of  social  and  physical  support  and 
coercion,  which  lies  dimly  in  the  fringe  of  consciousness  with  its  intimations 
of  experience  beyond  the  present,  which  rises  into  logical  and  moral  mean- 
ing and  objectivity  in  the  reconstructive  developments  of  experience,  and 
which  we  may  call  the  pedagogical  world.  To  be  sure,  this  pedagogical 
world  is  more  or  less  of  an  abstraction,  a  "possibility  of  further  experi- 
ence"; but  from  the  point  of  view  of  education  it  is  a  very  real  world. 
It  is  an  abstraction  in  terms  of  the  experience  which  has  not  yet  come  to 
include  it. 

We  all  feel  the  presence  of  this  larger  world,  in  some  degree,  today;  we 
have  the  implicit  sense  of  being  "hustled"  by  forces  that  are  beyond  us. 

39 


40  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

Experience  contains  elements  that  have  not  been  rationally  organized  and 
brought  under  the  control  of  our  central  life-purposes.  These  elements 
are  an  index  of  our  worldwide  life.  Institutions  are  methods  which  experi- 
ence originates  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  rational  control  over  growing 
complications  within  experience.  Experience  seeks  to  attain,  and  to 
maintain,  a  unified  development.  The  sense  of  being  " hustled"  is  an 
indication  that  this  unity  has  not  been  attained.  Its  logical  purpose  is  to 
spur  experience  on  to  more  strenuous  efforts  in  the  direction  of  attaining 
unity.  But,  when  this  feeling  becomes  overwhelming;  when  the  instru- 
ments of  organization  seem  to  fail,  and  no  new  instruments  are  at  hand,  and 
the  experience  possesses  no  power  to  work  out  new  instruments  or  methods 
— in  any  such  case  as  this,  experience  is  compelled  to  secure  its  unity  by  a 
definitely  immoral  method  of  excluding  some  of  the  elements  of  experience, 
even  when  those  elements  possess  logical  values.  Thus  is  many  a  child 
shut  out  from  the  possibilities  of  participation  in  the  world  of  ideas  and 
ideal  controls,  by  the  overwhelming  pressure  of  circumstance;  and  thus  is 
many  another  child  shut  out  from  the  participation  in  the  realities  of  ideas, 
by  the  social  pressure  which  destines  him  to  the  merely  theoretical  mastery 
of  an  existent  world  of  theory,  giving  neither  time  nor  stimulus  to  relate 
that  world  to  practice.  And  to  remedy  these  faults  which  are  imposed 
upon  the  inner  logical  world  of  the  individual  by  the  outer  pedagogical 
world,  that  outer  pedagogical  world — instead  of  reorganizing  the  logical 
instrumentalities,  i.  e.,  the  institutions,  by  which  to  secure  to  that  inner  world 
a  greater  control  over  the  processes  of  unified  and  inclusive  world-con- 
structiveness — seems  to  be  content,  in  large  measure,  to  temporize  with 
the  whole  matter  by  attempting  a  sort  of  extrinsic  " moral  education" 
which,  under  the  circumstances,  can  do  little  to  heal  the  great  organic 
wound  that  the  experience  of  multitudes  of  individuals  is  receiving  today. 
Thus  have  we  returned  to  the  point  from  which  we  set  out. 

What  are  those  "logical  instrumentalities"  mentioned  above  as  being 
the  mediators  of  the  larger  world-experience  to  the  developing  experience 
of  the  child?  They  are,  of  course,  innumerable.  Compayre'  speaks  of 
those  which  have  not  been  institutionalized  under  the  term,  collaborateurs 
occtdtes,  i.  e.,  the  innumerable  forces  of  the  world  that  play  upon  the  life 
of  the  child,  in  implicit  but  very  real  ways.  In  general,  we  may  say  that 
these  instrumentalities  include  every  "  influence  that  specializes  the  child's 
reactions  and  differentiates  his  world,  and  that  at  the  same  time  increases 
his  control  over  his  own  development."1  In  the  primitive  world,  none  of 
these  influences  was  specifically  institutionalized,  in  its  own  right  as  related 

1  King,  Psychology  of  Child  Development. 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCHOOL  41 

to  the  child,  except,  perhaps,  the  definite  organization  of  adolescent  awaken- 
ings into  a  means  of  emphasizing  the  content  of  the  social  life,  and  the  real- 
ity and  responsibility  of  the  social  purpose. 

But  when  the  primitive  world  of  social  habit  was  broken  in  upon  by 
the  growing  complexity  of  social  life,  e.  g.,  in  Greece,  these  collaborateurs 
occultes  could  no  longer  perform  the  more  complicated  task  of  maintaining 
the  organic  relatedness  of  the  child- world  to  the  larger  social  world:  there 
were  phases  of  this  larger  education  that  could  not  be  intrusted  to  the 
implicit  educative  influences  of  social  life  alone.  We  mark  the  slow 
beginnings  of  educational  institutions  of  various  sorts,  which  are  not  con- 
sciously established  but  which  grow  as  the  problem  grows.  Among  these, 
and  most  important  of  them,  is  the  school,  in  some  one  of  its  many  genetic 
forms.  Logically,  therefore,  the  school  is  an  instrument  which  experience 
has  attempted  to  develop,  pari  passu  with  the  development  of  the  problem. 
The  problem  was  as  follows.  The  world  of  social  experience,  i.  e.,  the 
pedagogical  world  of  the  child,  was  beginning  its  definite  specialization 
and  differentiation  into  the  forms  of  practice  and  theory,  habit  and  idea; 
practice  went  on  as  did  habit  in  the  older  world;  but  practice  needed 
theory  for  its  illumination.  Now,  it  is  perfectly  legitimate  for  such  differ- 
entiation to  take  place,  provided  the  two  phases  of  it  are  constantly  related 
back  to  the  unity  of  experience — theory  existing  only  for  the  illumination 
of  practice,  and  practice  looking  constantly  for  the  larger  interpretation 
that  theory  can  bring.  So  long,  then,  as  the  unity  of  experience  is  main- 
tained, this  differentiation  of  experience  means  the  attainment  of  a  larger 
content,  a  larger  world,  a  more  rich  and  varied  selfhood,  a  more  conscious 
control,  and  a  larger  organization  of  the  powers  of  control,  both  logical 
and  moral. 

But  institutions  develop  slowly,  and,  once  incased  in  substantial  social 
habit,  they  may  resist  all  development  influences,  save  those  insidious  ones 
which  are  at  the  heart  of  the  Zeitgeist.  And  they  may  even  sever  all  con- 
nection, save  a  purely  formal  one,  with  the  fundamental  influences  which 
produced  them.  The  school  developed  as  an  extension  of  the  organizing 
powers  of  the  home  and  general  social  influence,  to  help  mediate  the  grow- 
ing complexity  of  the  world  to  the  still  simple  experience  of  the  child.  At 
first  its  work  was  as  immediately  social  as  was  the  work  of  the  home.  Its 
foundations  were  in  the  implicit  developments  of  the  common  social  world. 
But  the  development  of  the  social  world,  which  determined  the  develop- 
ment of  this  extension  of  the  educative  instrumentalities  of  society,  was  in 
the  direction  of  the  theory  of  the  social  and  physical  worlds  which  grew  up 
in  the  reconstructive  processes  of  the  times.     The  development  of  theory 


42  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

as  a  control  in  the  reconstructive  processes  of  society  called  forth  the  develop- 
ment of  the  school.  All  this  was  slow  in  its  growth,  but  lasting  in  its 
effects.  For,  since  the  school  grew  out  of  theoretical  needs,  its  mission 
was  early  conceived  to  be  theoretical,  rather  than  practical;  or  rather, 
since,  and  as  long  as,  practice  was  provided  for  in  the  forms  and  activities 
that  lay  outside  the  school,  the  school  was  free  to  devote  its  energies  to  the 
theoretical  aspects  of  the  differentiation  of  experience;  but  always  as  these 
were  determined  out  of  the  actual  social  foundations  of  life. 

But  as  the  world  grew  more  and  more  complex,  the  school  became 
more  and  more  institutionalized,  rationalized,  and  fixed  in  its  forms  and 
methods.  Its  social  foundations  were  more  or  less  forgotten :  its  curricu- 
lum became  conventionalized  without  explicit  reference  to  the  social 
world  in  which  it  was  to  function;  curricula  were  transplanted  from  one 
social  situation  to  another  without  thought  of  relevancy  or  vital  connected- 
ness; and,  especially,  the  whole  work  of  the  school  came  to  be  conceived  of 
as  the  mediation  of  ideas  from  one  generation  to  the  next.  This  would 
not  have  been  so  disastrous  had  the  logic  of  education  been  functional 
and  genetic;  but,  of  course,  that  was  impossible.  So  the  school  has  come 
down  to  us,  changed  in  many  important  particulars,  of  course,  and  more 
and  more  yielding  to  change;  with  many  of  its  older  features  reconstructed 
in  conformity  with  the  modern  world-spirit,  but  in  large  measure  still 
meriting  the  criticism  with  which  this  study  began.  The  old  foundations 
of  social  practice,  which  formerly  gave  vitality  to  the  formal  curriculum 
of  the  school,  are  practically  gone,  and  the  school  is  left  suspended  in  the 
air,  with  its  theoretical  curriculum  revealed  in  all  its  formal  barrenness; 
but  at  the  vital  heart  of  it,  struggling  to  pull  itself  back  to  earth  by  all  sorts 
of  means — commercial  courses,  trade  courses,  manual  training,  "fads" 
of  many  sorts,  and  last,  but  not  least,  efforts  at  " moral  education." 

It  is  evident  that  the  institution  of  the  school  is  no  longer  a  type  of 
that  old  organic  instrument  which  at  first  mediated  a  growing  world  of 
theory  to  a  growing  world  of  practice  in  such  a  way  that  the  result  was  a 
unified  world  of  intelligent  practice,  or  practical  theory  which  was  com 
pletely  at  home  in  the  world.  The  school  has  not  widened  and  broadened, 
as  the  limits  of  theory  and  practice  have  widened  and  broadened  The 
school  has  not  kept  itself  close  to  its  proper  roots  in  the  immediate  social 
life  of  the  community.  Too  intent  on  " culture"  and  "liberal  education," 
it  has  finally  found  that  it  is  unable  to  give  to  the  child  either  liberal  culture 
or  intelligent  practice,  save  in  the  case  of  the  extraordinary  child,  whom 
it  cannot  keep  out  of  its  rightful  kingdom. 

We  have  already  seen  that  the  school  cannot  be  reconstructed  as  a  sort 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCHOOL  43 

of  isolated  model  community,  imitating  the  larger  world  in  some  of  its 
phases;  for  it  is  certain  that  those  partial  results  cannot  be  depended  upon, 
either  to  be  carried  over  into  the  larger  world,  themselves,  or  to  become 
the  bases  of  organic  world-habits  suited  to  the  larger  situation.  We  have 
noted  also  that  in  the  city  life  of  today  the  older  foundations  of  concrete 
social  practice,  the  home  and  the  social  neighborhood,  with  their  work 
and  their  social  criticism,  are  practically  gone.  Thus  is  the  old  and  origi- 
nal gap  widened  immeasurably.  The  educational  institution,  instead  of 
being  called  upon  to  mediate  between  the  world  of  ideas  and  the  world  of 
concrete  practice,  is  now  called  upon  to  mediate  a  world  of  ideas  to  children 
whose  basis  of  practical  experience  is  woefully  meager  and  insufficient.  The 
problem  of  the  school  seems  to  be,  or  seems  destined  to  become,  that  of 
providing  in  kindergarten  and  grades  the  very  fundamentals  of  social 
practice,  and  to  organize  into  that  practice  the  interpretative  ideals  which 
the  practice  calls  for  and  develops,  and  to  make  the  whole  of  this  educative 
situation  develop  in  the  direction  of  some  specific  vocation  which  shall 
be  both  practical  and  theoretical— that  is,  technically  mastered  and  intelli- 
gently practiced. 

Such  a  school  must,  to  be  sure,  be  related  to  the  actual  present  conditions 
and  demands  of  social  purpose  and  activity;  it  must  be  of  the  nature  of 
the  old  apprenticeship  schools,  i.  e.,  immediately  subject  to  the  pressures, 
coercion,  support,  and  criticisms  of  the  real  social  situation;  yet  it  must 
be  conceived  broadly  enough  to  make  room  for  constructive  development 
of  the  social  and  physical  order  of  the  world  in  experience,  which  has  been 
described  above  as  the  real  moral  education.  To  this  end,  the  real  curricu- 
lum of  the  school  must  become,  in  the  words  of  Professor  Dutton,  "the 
current  of  social  activity  that  makes  up  the  world."  This  social  activity 
can  be  analyzed  into  its  elements  of  practice  and  theory,  and  graded  to  the 
stages  of  the  child's  development;  education  will  begin  with  practice,  and 
by  the  successive  enrichment  of  practice  by  means  of  ideas,  and  the  actual- 
izing of  ideas  in  terms  of  practice,  the  actual  modern  world  can  be  so  con- 
structed as  to  make  possible,  once  more,  the  unity  of  experience;  but  now, 
under  the  leadership  of  intelligence. 

Such  an  educative  activity  will  begin  just  where  the  child  is,  and  it 
will  base  itself  upon  the  principle  that  all  experience  is  educative,  not 
merely  the  experience  of  some  classic  past.  It  will  attempt  to  build  upon 
the  child's  own  consciousness  by  organizing  more  and  more  of  experience 
into  the  objective  forms  of  control.  With  some  children  this  will  not  be 
a  problem  of  organizing  a  " situation"  in  the  first  place;  for  many  children 
seem  to  delight  in  working  out  the  deeper  implications  of  their  imperfect 


44  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

experiences;  with  others  it  will  take  the  form  of  getting  the  child  into  a 
situation  which  will  be  real  and  interesting  and  from  which  the  child  cannot 
escape  without  actually  getting  the  values  which  arise  from  the  living 
and  developing  of  that  situation.  It  is  to  be  understood  that  the  foundation 
of  a  moral  life  is  actual  content  of  experience:  there  should  be  no  great 
haste  to  get  to  the  " moral"  training.  All  experiences  which  are  concrete 
and  vital  will  minister  to  the  later  moral  life.  Educational  situations  must 
be  of  this  character,  and  all  that  can  be  brought  in  to  help  the  child  to  com- 
prehend the  meanings  of  the  experience,  as  relating  it  to  nature  and  to 
human  nature  and  to  the  social  order,  will  help  to  make  it  more  completely 
educative. 

And  especially  must  the  heart  of  the  whole  school  work  be  the  effort  on 
the  part  of  the  teacher  to  secure  to  the  child  a  real  control  of  the  method 
of  experience.  This  is  a  delicate  matter.  It  is  very  easy  to  make  the  child 
oversophisticated.  The  child's  attention  must  be  kept  upon  the  content 
of  experience,  but  the  teacher's  efforts  must  be  constantly  directed  toward 
making  that  implicit  content  organize  itself  into  definite  forms,  categories, 
controls,  method  of  experience.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  most  of  that 
which  is  called  bad  in  boys  and  girls  comes  from  the  lack  of  method  of 
handling  new  experiences.  In  the  complexities  of  modern  life;  in  the  life 
of  the  street  and  the  school;  in  the  overwhelming  complications  of  the 
educational  collaborateurs  occultes  which  surround  the  child,  new  experi- 
ences are  constantly  being  forced  into  attention:  overstimulations  and 
excitations  which,  in  the  lack  of  adequate  powers  of  organization  and  con- 
trol, can  have  but  one  result:  the  child  finds  new  experiences  pleasant, 
and  goes  after  them. 

Organization  of  control  is  slow,  at  first,  for  there  must  be  large  content 
out  of  which  experience  of  control  can  arise.  The  child's  world  must  be 
brought  into  the  school,  not  some  foreign  world;  or  rather,  the  school,  as 
an  instrument  of  interpretation,  of  social  control  and  criticism,  of  social 
support  and  compulsion,  ought  to  be  brought  into  the  life  of  the  child, 
organically  at  that  point  where  the  home  begins  to  fail  of  performing  these 
things  completely.  For  the  child's  life  and  development  must  be  inter- 
preted to  its  growing  consciousness,  it  must  be  controlled  and  criticized  by 
forces  that  appeal  to  the  child  as  resident  in  the  actual  world  of  living 
reality,  it  must  be  supported  and  compelled  to  activity  by  elements  that 
justify  themselves  to  the  child  as  intrinsic  and  not  extrinsic  and  extra- 
neous. When  the  teacher  and  the  curriculum  and  the  social  world  of  the 
school  come  to  have  these  valid  contents  to  the  child,  the  isolation  of  the 
school  will  be  a  thing  of  the  past. 


UNfVr 

THE   LOGIC   OF   SCHOOL  45 

Education  must  begin  with  the  child's  native  endowments;  but  it 
will  begin  by  seeking  to  free  as  wide  a  variety  of  these  as  possible,  for  the 
richness  and  variety  of  the  personal  life  of  maturity  will  depend  upon  the 
richness  and  variety  of  these  native  activities  which  are  brought  into  actual 
functioning.  The  first  six  or  seven  years  of  life  will  be  spent  in  organizing 
these  activities  into  the  social  and  physical  environment,  filling  them  with  the 
concrete  content  of  the  world  as  it  comes  to  the  developing  experience  of  the 
child.  It  is,  largely,  in  the  richness  and  variety  of  this  concrete  content 
that  the  possibility  of  a  later  organization  of  life  to  moral  ends  is  made 
possible.  For,  as  before  pointed  out,  consciousness,  the  larger  sense  of 
self,  and  the  more  complete  organization  of  the  reflective  powers  by  which 
experience  finds  its  complete  control — these  are  all  functions  of  those  recon- 
structions which  grow  out  of  the  conflicting  conditions  of  experience.  If 
life  should  embody  but  a  single  impulse  or  activity,  it  could  never  know 
more  than  this;  its  term  would  be  spent  in  the  service  of  this  one  aim. 
But  a  multitude  of  impulses  and  activities  will  be  constantly  conflicting 
and  calling  for  reconstruction;  and  this  will  mean  the  possibility  of  the 
larger  ends  of  education. 

In  the  preadolescent  years,  after  six  or  seven,  the  child  is  actually 
engaged  in  organizing  these  preliminary  materials.  Ideas  will  be  in  demand, 
but  they  must  be  ideas  that  are  actually  vital  to  the  situation.  Activities 
will  be  most  dominant,  and  the  idea  must  always  be  the  servant  of  the 
activity.  Can  the  school  be  organized  in  these  years  around  these  dominant 
activity-motives  of  the  child?  Professor  James  declares  that  the  book 
ought  not  to  predominate  until  at  least  the  fifteenth  or  sixteenth  year.1 
But  what  would  our  schools  do  under  such  a  system  ?  There  is  a  whole 
primitive  world  of  activity  and  impulse  and  constructiveness  and  social 
content  that  needs  no  book  for  its  mediation:  it  needs  activity,  opportunity, 
stimulus,  social  support,  social  criticism,  social  compelling,  social  inter- 
pretation; but  it  needs  freedom  for  the  development  of  the  organizing 
powers  of  the  individual  experience,  it  needs  silence,  and  length  of  time; 
and  it  needs  release  from  those  whom  Browning  speaks  of — "The  fools 
who  crowded  youth,  nor  let  me  feel  alone." 

For  the  end  of  this  period  as  it  approaches  the  adolescent  years  with  then- 
profound  emotional  disturbances  must  see  the  child  pretty  definitely  self- 
centered,  stolid,  and  mature.  In  this  way,  alone,  will  he  be  able  to  come 
through  the  tremendous  cataclysms  of  the  next  period  without  complete 
destruction.     Dudley  Kidd  says  that  the  Kaffirs  are  completely  demoral- 

1  Monal  Instruction  and,  Training  in  Schools  (edited  by  Professor  M.  E.  Sadler), 
Vol.  I,  p.  94. 


46  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

ized  by  the  experiences  of  adolescence.  From  that  time  forth  the  whole 
of  life  centers  in  the  experiences  of  sex.  The  white  child  escapes  from  these 
decentralizing  results  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  he  has  built  up  a  core  of 
organization  and  a  premature  maturity  which  can  withstand  the  dissi- 
pating effects  of  the  emotional  disturbances  of  the  storm  and  stress  years. 
The  school  must  organize  itself  into  this  fundamental  phenomenon,  and 
bend  itself  to  this  situation. 

But  in  the  adolescent  period  the  child  comes  to  the  time  when  ideas 
are  rising,  when  problems  are  appearing,  when  experience  is  overflowing. 
There  is  definite  opening-out  of  the  complete  social  world  and  a  foundation 
is  appearing  for  relating  all  experience  to  the  whole  human  experience. 
There  is  a  demand  for  something  to  tie  to,  some  line  of  activity  to  realize 
oneself  upon.  There  is  a  demand  for  outlet  and  for  ideas  for  mediating 
that  demand.  This  is,  traditionally,  the  period  of  religious  conversions. 
But  children  differ  greatly  in  the  characteristics  of  the  period,  save  that 
all,  either  slowly  or  in  great  emotional  transformations,  make  life  over  in  this 
period.  This  is  just  a  plain  statement  of  fact,  which  the  school  must  organ- 
ize itself  into.  Conversion,  or  transformation,  or  growth  ought  to  become 
definite  forms  of  organizing  the  individual  into  the  complete  and  mature 
order  of  the  social  world.  Vocational  interests  and  activities,  social  alli- 
ances, intellectual  points  of  view,  ideals  of  character  and  purpose,  all  are 
wrapped  up  in  the  way  in  which  the  educational  forces  bring  their  inter- 
preting, supporting,  compelling,  and  criticizing  powers  to  bear  upon  this 
period.  The  youth  will  come  out  of  it  with  a  broad  variety  of  genuine 
interests,  and  with  a  full  social  consciousness,  and  with  powers  of  reflection 
becoming  definitely  organized  into  instruments  of  analysis  and  control, 
if  only  education  can  be  made  to  organize  itself  so  into  the  actual  course 
of  adolescent  experience  as  to  be  able  to  give  that  experience  the  interpre- 
tation and  support  it  needs,  instead  of  standing  outside  that  experience  and 
attempting  to  dictate  its  course  into  conventional  channels.  Here  is  where 
the  moral  life  as  an  evolution  of  the  inner  life  in  terms  of  personal  creative- 
ness  will  get  its  real  enfranchisement — or  its  tendency  to  half-forms,  to 
partial  results  and  mere  conventionality. 

Now,  no  detailed  pedagogy  of  such  a  school  is  possible,  at  present. 
That  is  the  work  of  experimentation  and  trial  which  numerous  laboratory 
schools  are  attempting  to  carry  out.  This  organic  conception  of  education 
lies  already  at  the  heart  of  what  is  called  the  "new  education."  There  has 
been  no  effort  in  this  study  to  prove  that  no  such  conception  has  existed 
in  the  past,  or  that  the  ideal  of  much  present-day  education  is  not  just 
this.    The  whole  purpose  of  this  study  has  been  to  show  that  all  the  tre- 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SCHOOL  47 

mendous  efforts  in  the  direction  of  " moral  education"  must  relate  them- 
selves back  to  this  fundamentally  organic  point  of  departure,  and  that 
the  demand  for  moral  values  in  education  must  realize  itself  in  terms  of 
functions  of  the  social  life — consciousness  and  organization  of  control, 
power  of  analysis  and  of  reaching  a  unified  plan  of  action,  power  of  pres- 
entation of  all  the  concrete  elements  in  any  "  moral  situation,"  and  the 
method  of  experience  which  can  deal  conclusively  with  the  problems  of 
life.  These  things  are  not  "natural,"  in  the  sense  that  they  can  be  depended 
upon  to  develop  under  any  and  all  circumstances;  they  are  not  to  be  grafted 
into  experience  in  terms  of  ideas  and  extrinsic  ideals;  talks  on  moral  habits 
will  not  produce  them  beyond  possibility  of  failure;  isolated  forms  of  cor- 
porate imitation  of  society  will  not  be  sufficient ;  life  itself  cannot  be  depended 
upon  to  do  the  work;  the  home  has  long  since  lost  its  power  to  carry  the 
process  through;  the  public  school,  as  at  present  organized,  is  too  remote 
from  the  actual  realities  of  life  and  action  to  make  its  appeal  in  other  than 
intellectual  terms. 

The  thinking  that  has  wrought  out  the  modern  world  of  mature  prob- 
lems and  activities,  that,  on  the  great  frontier  of  human  endeavor,  is  solv- 
ing problems  of  individual  and  social  well-being,  and  building  deeper  into 
the  world  of  theory  with  every  day  we  live,  must  turn  its  constructive 
thinking,  also,  upon  this  problem  of  assuring  to  the  youth  content  of  expend 
ence  in  terms  of  a  consciousness  of  self  and  the  world,  and  organization  of  \ 
experience  in  terms  of  the  complete  method  of  reflective  analysis  and  syn- 
thesis, by  means  of  which  the  living  and  vital  problems  of  the  present  shall 
become  the  heritage  of  the  completely  educated  individual.  Not  for  the 
few  to  carry  on,  merely;  but  for  the  whole  body  of  men  to  share,  each 
according  to  his  powers  doing  the  task  that  socially  needs  to  be  done — 
this  is  the  burden  of  democracy.     It  is  the  meaning  of  moral  education. 

Social  psychology  gives  us  the  general  character  of  the  educative  pro- 
cess— the  development  of  the  selves  of  social  relationships,  and  the  world 
of  social  means.  Ethical  theory  gives  us  the  content  of  moral  education, 
or  complete  education — the  social  consciousness  that  is  able  to  rise  to  the 
demands  of  a  situation  requiring  action,  and  so  to  organize  that  action  as 
to  realize  all  the  values  that  are  involved  in  it.  The  logic  of  experience 
gives  us  the  method  of  realizing  such  a  complete  organization  of  the  powers 
of  control  within  experience.  Of  course,  such  a  method  must  here  be  stated 
in  general  terms;  in  any  particular  situation  it  will  be  necessary  to  make 
it  keep  close  to  the  details  of  particularity.  Character,  the  end  of  moral 
education,  is  to  be  defined  as  such  an  organization  of  personal  selfhood, 
by  means  of  large  and  rich  content  of  experience  and  a  correlative  develop- 


48  CURRENT  THEORIES  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION 

ment  of  the  powers  of  reflection,  as  shall  insure  that  that  self  will,  in 
successive  stages  of  its  development,  successively  identify  itself  with  the 
" highest  when  it  sees  it";  but  in  that  very  identification  it  will  be  gaining 
the  power  to  rise  above  the  old  good  to  new  levels  of  good  as  the  condi- 
tions of  life  demand. 

Can  the  school  ever  get  back  into  the  life,  in  this  organic  way,  and 
relate  itself  to  the  actual  world  of  the  child,  and  become  the  means  of  organ- 
izing the  implicit  environment  of  the  child  in  such  ways  that  all  these  results 
shall  be  attained:  the  ever-more-inclusive  self  shall  be  called  out,  the  more 
explicit  consciousness  shall  be  gained,  the  more  complete  content  of  mate- 
rials for  organization  shall  be  secured,  and  the  definite  process  of  organiza- 
tion shall  be  carried  forward  ?  The  answer  to  this  question  is  a  problem 
in  social  pedagogy;  but  the  answer  to  it  is  essential  to  a  final  solution  of 
the  problem  of  moral  education.  So  moral  education  merges  even  on 
its  formal  side  over  into  the  larger  question  of  social  pedagogy.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  many  of  the  ideals  of  the  advocates  of  "moral  education"  today 
are  impracticable;  for  there  is  little  use  in  filling  a  boy  with  "moral  ideals," 
most,  or  all,  of  which  he  must  lose  in  the  actual  work  of  the  world.  Moral 
education  must  not  come  at  the  problem  from  that  extrinsic  point  of  view. 
The  life  of  the  growing  child  is  a  function  of  the  life  of  the  social  whole. 
To  make  him  officiously  "moral "  is  to  make  a  fanatic  of  him.  His  morality 
must  be  a  power  of  control  of  experience  within  the  experience  itself — 
a  power  of  control  which  is  based  on  rich  content  of  experience,  and  power 
to  organize  that  content  into  interpretation  at  need.  This  is  the  real  work 
of  the  school,  or  of  the  educative  forces  of  the  community.  But  it  will 
take  definite  work  along  the  line  of  social  pedagogy  so  to  instil  this  organic 
concept  of  education  into  the  social  consciousness  and  conscience  that 
society  will  consent  to  see  the  school  be  made  the  vital  instrument  for  this 
living  education. 


^   OF  THE    ^ 

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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


DEC    8    1947 


v\ 


y 


MAY  83  1946 
18Nov'48HS 


LD  21 


V51PMC 

200ct'546H 

OCT  6     1954 L 
'      26Feb'56PL 

ftB25\956LU 


H,<x'60JoI 

H^SHS  CO 

DEC1    1960 
JAN231967  8  8 


RECEIVFO 

JAN  18 '67 -11  Al 

3 
LOAN  DEPT. 


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DEC  2  6  1956  'I9eMR1d 
NOV  12  '67  -8  PM 


■2  O 


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